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BEQUEST OF 
ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 



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(otte 



THE YOUTH 



Duchess of Angouleme 



BY 

IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND,^7yvX^4^-'-feM 



TRANSLATED BY 
/K- . ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN 



WITH PORTRAIT 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SGRIBNER'S SONS 
1915 



COPYRIGHT, 1892, BV 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



Bequest 

Albert Adsit Olemons 

Aug. 24, 1938 

(Not available for exchange) 



DC 157 
.a. 




CONTENTS 



FAGB 

Introduction 1 



FIBST PART 
THE CAPTIVITY 

CHAFTGB 

I. The Temple Towek 45 

11. Madame Elisabeth 52 

III. The Death of Madame Elisabeth 68 

IV, Solitude 78 

V. The Last Days of Louis XVII 90 

VI. The Mitigation of Captivity 110 

VII. New Severities 135 

VIII. The Negotiation with Austria 142 

IX. The Departure from the Temple 149 

SECOND PART 

THE EXILE 

I. The Journey to the Frontier 157 

IL Basel 164 

m. Vienna 170 

IV. Louis XVIII 183 

V 



Vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER FAGX 

V. The :feMiGRES 192 

VI. MiTTAU 202 

VIL The Aerival of Marie TniRisB 216 

VIII. The Marriage 223 

IX. The End of the Sojourn at Mittau 236 

X. The Departure from Mittau 247 

XI. The Sojourn in Prussia and Poland 264 

XII. The Second Sojourn at Mittau 268 

XIII. Hartwell 272 

XIV. The End op the Exile 287 



THE YOUTH 

OF THB 

Duchess of Angouleme 



THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF 
ANGOULEME 

INTRODUCTION 



IF there are nations which have not glory enough, 
there are others which, as an offset, have too 
much. It may be said of French annals that in this 
respect they sin by excess. Our illustrious country 
has three legends, all of which — the legend of roy- 
alty, the republican legend, and the imperial legend 
— occupy many grand pages — pages which, how- 
ever, contradict each other and deprive our nation 
of that character of unity which is as essential to the 
life of nations as to that of individuals. The adage, 
"Happy are the nations that have no history," 
should not be taken literally. But the fact must 
be recognized that nations which have too much his- 
tory are not happy. 

It is the misfortune of France that she has been 
divided against herself. United, she would have 
been able, as in the days of Louis XIV., to defy all 
Europe and repel every invasion. It is singular to 

1 



THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 



note how successfully the smallest countries, pro- 
viding that all hearts beat in unison, resist the most 
powerful forces. Switzerland has been able to make 
itself respected by all conquerors. The Sun-King 
was never able to subjugate Holland. With the 
troops that he had been obliged to leave in Vendue, 
Napoleon might have been able to win the battle of 
Waterloo. If account be taken of our internal dis- 
sensions, it may be said that France has more than 
once been vanquished not so much by foreigners as 
by itself. 

When one passes from the study of the first 
Empire to that of the Restoration, a new nation 
seems to have come into existence. Neither the 
flag nor the ideas, neither the passions nor the mem- 
ories, are the same. Two men of different countries 
are less unlike than an imperialist and a legitimist. 
What community of principle could exist between a 
volunteer of 1792 and a Chouan, between a grenadier 
of the Imperial Guard and a soldier of Condi's 
army ? To one Napoleon is a hero ; to the other he 
is a monster. To one Waterloo is a disaster; to the 
other, a victory. To one the Revolution is a deliver- 
ance; to the other it is the abomination of desolation. 
The same words do not mean the same things. 
What one calls fidelity the other calls treason. The 
selfsame act is characterized as virtuous or as crimi- 
nal, according as one looks at it from the point of 
view of one camp or the other. Between contradic- 
tions so violent as these the historian feels in some 



INTRODUCTION 



degree those anxieties which, during the Hundred 
Days, tormented Marshal Ney, the bravest of the 
brave ; he needs a strict conscience and great calm- 
ness if he would preserve in his judgments that 
absolute impartiality in the absence of which history 
would be but a discredited pamphlet, like every- 
thing else that bases itself on purely partisan spirit. 

These reflections occur to us as soon as we begin 
the third series of "The Women of the Tuileries." 
It will perhaps be said that we are inclined to 
attach an exaggerated importance to women. In 
our opinion they have too often been neglected in 
history. Without deep study of the character and 
life of Marie Antoinette it is impossible to under- 
stand the Old Regime or the Revolution ; and yet it 
is only within the last twenty years that history has 
become seriously interested in this most touching 
and interesting figure. M. Thiers gave hardly any 
pages to the Empress Josephine. Nevertheless, we 
think that, without that woman, Bonaparte would 
never have been the Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army of Italy, First Consul, or Emperor. As to 
Marie Louise, feeble as her image seems at the first 
glance, we believe that her career illustrates both 
the culminating point and the decline of Napoleon 
better than any of the commentaries. 

In later times history has made great progress. 
From science it has borrowed the processes of 
analysis and synthesis; from art, the feeling for 
the picturesque and local color. Michelet said: 



THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 



"History is a resurrection," and this motto has 
become the watch-word of his disciples. They have 
undertaken to revivify not only things, but persons ; 
not only bodies, but souls. "In history," said Mgr. 
Dupanloup, " it is souls only that are interesting to 
me. Facts, common occurrences, riots, battles, 
victories, defeats, treaties, and all that sort of thing 
one is obliged to know, but all this amounts to little 
without the history of souls. It is really only the 
history of souls that touches and illumines." The 
developments of psychology ought, indeed, to inten- 
sify our application to the study of feminine char- 
acters. The new historic school, inaugurated by 
men of genius whose obscure disciple we are, has 
employed the methods of philosophy, painting, and 
the dramatic art. Considering that the life of peo- 
ples is a series of grandiose dramas, now brilliant 
and now dismal, it has undertaken to dispose the 
scenery and light up the stage, to bring to life again, 
not merely the principal actors, but the secondary 
ones and even the supernumeraries, and is persuaded 
that if local color is faithfully preserved, if descrip- 
tions are exact, if monuments and places where 
events took place appear plainly before the reader, 
if, especially, characters are studied conscientiously, 
an historical work, while adhering scrupulously to 
truth, may yet be made as attractive as a play, an 
historical romance, or a novel. 

The period we are about to study might inspire 
an artist or a ^)oet as well as an historian. We 



INTRODUCTION 



open our recital in the Prison of the? Temple on the 
day when Marie Antoinette, leaving her daughter, 
her son, and her sister-in-law behind her, departed 
from it to the Conciergerie ; we shall end the tale at 
Goritz, in the chapel of the Franciscans, on the day 
when the Count of Chambord, buried at the side of 
Charles X. and the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, 
bore the white flag like a shroud into his tomb. 
There are captivities, exiles, revolutions, and assas- 
sinations in this history; dramas in which the 
characters are courtiers, soldiers, and the people; 
adventures that recall the heroines of Walter Scott ; 
tragedies in the manner of -^schylus and Sophocles ; 
hosannas and anathemas; smiles, tears, splendid 
fetes, and sombre scenes ; contrasts to describe which 
would require the powers of a Shakespeare, and 
lessons which would have been worthy of the elo- 
quence of a Bossuet. 

The two principal heroines of this period are the 
Duchess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry. 
"We shall try to group around these two princesses 
the persons who play a part — either with the Bour- 
bons in exile, or the Bourbons on the throne. One 
cannot well understand the Restoration unless he 
identifies himself for a moment with the ideas, ha- 
treds, and prejudices that existed at the time. One 
needs to ask himself : " What should I have thought 
if my relatives had been guillotined; if I had fought 
in the ranks of the Vendean army or that of Conde ; 
if the education I received at my mother's knee, and 



TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUlMe 



the religious and political principles imbibed in 
infancy, if my interests, my passions, and those of 
my family and friends, and my entire surroundings 
had inspired me with a horror of the French Revo- 
lution and the Empire which was its continuation?" 
To the emigres the conqueror at Austerlitz was but 
a crowned Jacobin — a Robespierre on horseback. It 
was he who had prevented repentant France from cast- 
ing herself into the arms of her rightful sovereign. 
It was he, the friend of Barras, who had prevented 
the Convention from going down under the weight 
of public contempt and indignation. It was he who, 
on the 13th Vendemiaire, had trained his guns upon 
the honest people of Paris from the steps of Saint 
Roch; who had fought beside former Septembrists 
and the gendarmes of Fouquier-Tinville. It was he 
who had sent Augereau, the author of the hateful 
coup d'etat of the 18th Fructidor to the Directory. 
To him were due those transportations to Cayenne 
in iron cages, those horrible proscriptions, described 
as dull guillotines, which were worse than death 
itself. It was he who had assassinated the Duke 
d'Enghien. It was he who, through his insensate 
ambition, had roused all Europe and left France far 
smaller than when he became its master. It was he 
who had brought upon the country the indignity of 
invasion, which it had not known for ages. 

On the contrary, in the belief of legitimists, roy- 
alty was a paternal, tutelary, civilizing, and repar- 
ative government. In 1792, they said perfect free- 



INTRODUCTION 



dom had been granted by Louis XVI., and all that 
had been done since the time of the martyr-king 
had been not merely useless, but disastrous. If one 
wants to know what the legitimists thought in 1814 
of the Emperor and the Empire, let him re-read 
Chateaubriand's famous brochure, Buonaparte and 
the Bourbons. If persons who had received favors 
from Napoleon could express themselves about him 
as Madame de R^musat has done, what must those 
have thought and said who, like certain of the 
emigres, had always been his implacable enemies? 
What, in respect to him, must have been the ideas 
of the orphan of the Temple, the daughter of Louis 
XVI. and Marie Antoinette, the Duchess of Angou- 
leme? We take sides with no regime and are 
equally averse to the White and the Red Terror; 
our aim is absolute impartiality ; but we try to repro- 
duce faithfully the circumstances which surrounded 
the heroines whose lives and character we wish to 
retrace. 

The Duchess of Angoul^me and the Duchess of 
Berry are two types which offer a singular contrast. 
The first is always austere ; the other, often frivolous. 
But each had generous aspirations and patriotic 
sentiments. The heroism of the one is grave and 
religious; that of the other has something pagan 
about it : the first is like a saint ; the second like an 
amazon ; but as regards presence of mind and perfect 
coolness they are equally worthy of their ancestor, 
Henry IV. The two princesses represent legitimist 



8 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

France, — • one on its grandiose and the other on its 
gracious side. As a living symbol, the first personi- 
fies the sorrows and catastrophes of royalty: at the 
courts of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., the other 
means youth and the future, radiance and the dawn. 

A perfectly consistent character, free from incon- 
sequence and contradictions, as well as from the 
levity and fickleness of her sex, possessing a just 
mind, an intrepid heart, and a soul without fear and 
without reproach ; guiltless of a single bad action or 
wicked thought; counting among her seventy- two 
years, three of semi-captivity in the Tuileries, three 
years and four months of captivity and unutterable 
anguish in the Temple, and more than forty spent 
in exile, the daughter of Louis XVI. is assuredly 
one of the most majestic and pathetic figures in all 
history. As Chateaubriand has said: "A weak and 
suffering woman has often borne as heavy a load as 
the strongest one. There is no heart that is not 
moved when it remembers her. Her sufferings 
reached such a height that they have become one of 
the grandeurs of France." The just man of whom 
Horace speaks has no more energy and moral force 
than this woman. One might say of her: Impavi- 
damferient ruinoe. 

The orphan of the Temple pardons, but she does 
not forget. The tortures that crucified her youth 
have cast a black veil over her whole life. The 
Tuileries appears to her only as a fatal spot which 
recalls the mournful daj^s between the 20th of June 



INTRODUCTION 9 



and the 10th of August. During the entire Restora- 
tion she refuses to pass Place Louis XV., the square 
of crime, on which were erected the scaffolds of her 
father, her mother, and her aunt, the incomparable 
Madame Elisabeth. In her manners and turn of 
mind the Duchess of Angouleme resembles Louis 
XVI. rather than Marie Antoinette. Her character, 
like that of her father, is a mixture of goodness and 
rusticity. She has not her mother's elegant instincts 
and feminine charm. The society of the Little 
Trianon would have distressed her beyond measure. 
She thinks that the crown should not be an ornament, 
but a burden. She cares nothing for theatres, orna- 
ments, and fetes. Her voice is somewhat harsh. 
Piety is the foundation of her soul. Nothing equals 
her faith unless it be her courage. Her feelings are 
deep, but not sentimental. The romantic side of 
suffering offends her. Annoyed by hearing herself 
called the modern Antigone, she mistrusts what 
might be called literary tears and emotions made to 
order. Taught in the school of misfortune and 
versed in all the palinodes of courtiers by hard expe- 
rience, she dislikes to make a spectacle of her griefs. 
She hides them in the depths of her heart as in an 
impenetrable sanctuary, and confides her regrets and 
troubles to God alone. She thinks that a grief like 
hers needs neither comment nor publication. Noth- 
ing is affected in the Duchess of Angouleme, nothing 
theatrical, nothing factitious. All is sincere, all is 
austere, and all is true. This is what gives that 



10 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUZtME 

grandiose figure, more worthy than attractive, more 
rude than gracious, a something truly noble and 
imposing. 

The Duchess of Berry presents herself under a 
different aspect. By her romantic disposition and 
taste for the arts, she recalls the heroines of the 
court of the later Valois. She is a woman of the 
Renaissance rather than of the nineteenth century. 
A worthy descendant of the B^arnais, she has his 
good-humor and his valor, his gaiety and grace. 
Amiable, good, and charitable, unaffected and not 
conceited, unprejudiced and not spiteful, fond of 
room and liberty and sunlight, half Neapolitan, half 
French, she patronizes men of letters, painters, and 
musicians. She prevents the Tuileries from resem- 
bling a barracks or a prison. The court is brightened 
by her smile. Louvel's poniard interrupts her 
career of joy and pleasure. On the dismal night of 
February 13, 1820, she is sublime in her sorrow 
and despair. This widow of twenty-one years 
excites universal sympathy. She is flattered and 
exalted to the skies when, in the course of the same 
year, she gives birth to the son whom courtiers call 
the child of Europe, the child of miracle. 

The catastrophe of 1830 comes. The Duchess 
of Berry is not disheartened. In spite of Charles 
X. and the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, she 
plunges without hesitation into the most daring 
adventures. A reader of Walter Scott, one would 
say she wanted to add a chapter to the Jacobite 



INTRODUCTION 11 



exploits of Diana Vernon, Alice Lee, and Flora 
Maclvor. She is reproached with having put faith 
too readily in the promises of her partisans; but 
how many oaths had been taken to her and her son ! 
Is an imaginative, an emotional woman inexcusable 
for thinking she is still in the age of knights and 
troubadours ? The legend of the Duchess of Angou- 
leme is the Temple, and that of the Duchess of 
Berry is La Vendee. The daughter of Louis XVI. 
all alone, sweeping her own room, mending her only 
gown, escaping as by miracle from a band of jailers 
and tormentors; and the mother of the Count of 
Chambord, disguising herself as a servant, walking 
barefoot through a crowd of spies and gendarmes, 
crouching for sixteen consecutive hours without 
eating and almost without breathing in the nar- 
row hiding-place of the house of the Demoiselles 
Duguigny, at Nantes, both affect the heart with 
tenderness and pity. 

To the end of their lives the Duchess of Angou- 
leme and the Duchess of Berry retained their char- 
acteristics and ways of doing things. In her latest 
exiles, the daughter of Louis XVI. was what she 
had been in the Temple and the Tuileries, an august 
princess, a noble Christian, a saint. The mother of 
the Count of Chambord never ceased for an instant, 
either before or after her misfortunes, to be a lovable 
and attractive woman. Catastrophes under whose 
weight so many other princesses might have suc- 
cumbed, could not break the springs of her spirit. 



12 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULMe 

Like Homer's Andromache, she smiled even amid 
her tears. When, toward the end of her career, so 
fertile in vicissitudes of every kind, one saw her 
entertain with such affability and grace, or was 
present at the banquets, balls, concerts, and private 
theatricals she gave at her palace in Venice, her wit, 
her good humor, and gaiety caused surprise. Nobody 
could imagine himself in the presence of a woman 
who had gone through so many trials, exiles, and 
revolutions — of a wife whose husband had been 
assassinated, and a mother whose son had been 
deprived of his heritage. No princess in prosperity, 
no sovereign on the throne, displayed more amenity, 
more charm, or more enjoyment than this proscribed 
woman. 

Before beginning the study we are now approach- 
ing, let us cast a rapid and comprehensive glance at 
the career of the two women who are its principal 
heroines. 

II 

The daughter of Louis XVI. was born at Ver- 
sailles, December 19, 1778. Her birth nearly cost 
her mother's life. "Poor little girl," said Marie 
Antoinette, " you were not wished for, but you shall 
not be less dear. A son would have belonged more 
particularly to the State. You will be mine; you 
shall have all my care, you shall share my happiness 
and lighten my griefs." On the day when the 
young Princess nlade her first communion, her father 



INTRODUCTION 13 



addressed her these words which she was never to 
forget: "Remember, my daughter, that religion is 
the source of happiness, and our support in the 
troubles of life. Do not believe that you will be 
sheltered from them. You are very young, but you 
have already seen your father more than once 
afflicted." Trials had come very early to the future 
orphan of the Temple. In June, 1789, she lost her 
brother, the first Dauphin, who died of consumption, 
like the monarchy. During the terrible night of 
October 5-6, she awoke, all in a tremble, at the 
moment when her mother was escaping, half-dressed, 
from her chamber, while the populace were rushing 
into it and thrusting their bloody pikes into the 
royal couch. In the morning she was at Marie 
Antoinette's side when the Queen was forced to 
make her appearance on the great balcony of the 
chateau of Versailles, in obedience to the orders of an 
infuriated multitude. "No children," shouted the 
mob. No children, ... as if the madmen dreaded 
lest the sight of innocence might lessen their fury. 
A few minutes later, the poor little Princess, in the 
same carriage with her father and mother, that car- 
riage preceded by pikemen carrying the heads of the 
murdered body-guards, made the fatal journey from 
Versailles to the Tuileries, vestibule of the prison 
and the scaffold. She accompanied her parents at 
the time of the flight to Varennes. She saw the 
heroic Dampierre fall, crying as he died, "Long 
live the King!" After June 20, 1792, when the 



14 THE DUCHESS OF ANQOULtUE 

populace had invaded the royal residence, a National 
Guard said to the Queen, pointing to the young 
Princess as he did so: "How old is Mademoiselle?" 
Marie Antoinette replied : " She is at an age when 
such scenes cause only too much horror." On 
August 10, the poor child left the Tuileries, cling- 
ing to her mother's hand ; and in the narrow box of 
the Logographe^ only eight feet square by ten feet 
high, for sixteen hours together, in suffocating heat, 
lacking air and lacking food, she witnessed the 
death-struggle of royalty. When she was confined 
in the Temple she was not yet fourteen. She 
entered it with her family, August 13, 1792. She 
remained there until December 18, 1795. Deprived, 
one after another, of her father, her brother, her 
mother, and her aunt, she was at last left alone in 
her prison. Subjected in a place of anguish and 
torture to the rigors of solitary confinement, a pun- 
ishment not then inflicted on the greatest criminals, 
she escaped the fate of the unfortunate Louis XVII. 
only by a miracle of moral force and physical energy. 
However, the hardships of her captivity were les- 
sened at the close of 1795. Some friendly persons 
were allowed to enter the dungeon of the Temple. 
But the young Princess remained inconsolable. " It 
would have been better for me to share the fate of 
my relatives, " she said, "than to be condemned to 
weep for them. " She regretted that she too had not 
ascended the scaffold. It was decided to exchange 
her for the Conventionists whom Dumouriez had 



INTRODUCTION 15 



delivered up to Austria. But exile seemed to her 
no sweeter than captivity. "I would prefer," she 
said, "the smallest house in France to the honors 
which everywhere else await a princess so unhappy 
as I." Some one said to her just as she was cross- 
ing the frontier: "Madame, France ends here." 
Her eyes filled with tears. "I leave France with 
regret," she exclaimed, "for I shall never cease to 
regard it as my country." 

She arrived in Vienna January 9, 1796. She had 
just completed her seventeenth year. Her beauty, 
sanctified by misfortune, possessed a touching charm 
which inspired respectful admiration. She lived for 
nearly three years and a half in the Austrian capital, 
where she was not really free. She wanted to rejoin 
her uncle, Louis XVIII. She wanted to marry her 
cousin, the Duke of Angouleme, in accordance with 
the last wishes of her father and mother, while the 
court of Vienna proposed to give her to the Arch- 
duke Charles. Their object was to detain her as a 
sort of hostage, and use her marriage with an Aus- 
trian prince as a means of promoting the dismember- 
ment of France. She defeated all these combinations 
by her presence of mind, firmness, and patriotism. 
In May, 1799, she was finally permitted to rejoin 
her uncle, Louis XVIII. , at Mittau, in Courland, 
and in the following month she was married there 
to the Duke of Angouleme. A caprice of the Czar 
Paul drove her and her uncle from this asylum 
where she had found comparative repose, and which 



16 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOVLtME 

she left in January, 1801. She crossed Lithuania 
during a wintry storm, amidst a driving snow. It 
was then that people began to call her the French 
Antigone. "Nothing extorts a complaint from 
her," wrote Count d'Avaray at this period. "She 
is an angel of consolation to our master and a model 
of courage to us all. Ah ! how well the daughter of 
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette has profited by 
the lessons and examples of her childhood!" This 
was an eventful journey for the exiles : after Mittau, 
Memel, Koenigsberg, and Warsaw; back to Mittau 
again, and then, in England, Godsfield Hall and 
Hartwell. In 1814, a gleam of light appeared in 
this sombre destiny. On Annunciation Day, March 
25, the Duchess of Angoul^me, who was then at 
Hartwell, learned that her husband had made a 
triumphal entry into Bordeaux. On April 24, she 
landed with Louis XVIII. at Calais. Her long 
exile was at an end. She arrived at Paris with the 
King on May 3, in an open carriage drawn by eight 
white horses; the streets were strewn with flowers 
and the houses hung with verdure. Indescribable 
enthusiasm and universal emotion were shown as 
she passed by. When she crossed the threshold of 
the Tuileries, that fatal palace which she had never 
seen since August 10, 1792, two hundred women 
dressed in white and adorned with lilies, kneeled 
before her, saying: "Daughter of Louis XVI., give 
us your blessing!" Overcome by emotion, she 
fainted away. 



INTRODUCTION 17 



This pathetic scene drew tears from every eye. 
We are men before we are royalists, imperialists, or 
republicans. Pity belongs to no party. Napoleon 
used to say: "Imagination rules the world." It is 
certain that the Duchess of AngoulSme's presence 
beside her uncle exerted a moral force and influence 
of the greatest value to that Prince. The conqueror 
of Austerlitz had shown France the majesty of glory. 
That of misfortune made its appearance with the 
daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Of 
all the persons belonging to the royal family, this 
holy woman most impressed the crowd, because, 
unlike Louis XVIII. and the Count of Artois, who 
had been abroad during the death-struggle of mon- 
archy, she had shared all the anguish of the martyred 
King and Queen, at the Tuileries, Varennes, and in 
the dungeon of the Temple. 

The Duchess of Angouleme was already a legend- 
ary figure. She was at Bordeaux when the first 
Restoration came to grief; perhaps, had she been 
with her uncle, she might have prevented Napoleon's 
re-entry into Paris. At Bordeaux she made the 
most energetic efforts to defend the royal cause, and 
even the imperial troops admired her firmness and 
her courage. Nevertheless, she was obliged to go 
into a new exile, which lasted only three months. 
On July 27, 1815, she returned to the Tuileries, but 
this time with a feeling of profound sadness. March 
20 had robbed her of many illusions. The recanta- 
tions that went on during and after the Hundred 



18 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

Days showed her human nature under a discourag- 
ing aspect. A Frenchwoman, she was humiliated by 
the foreign occupation; a royalist, she considered 
the presence of a regicide in the councils of Louis 
XVIII. as a disgrace to royalty. 

February 13, 1820, she was at the bedside of the 
Duke of Berry, who had been stabbed. "Courage, 
brother," she said to him; "but if God calls you to 
Himself, ask my father to pray for France and for 
us." On the day after the birth of the Duke of 
Bordeaux, which had been a great consolation to her 
afflicted spirit, one of her household said to her: 
"Your Royal Highness was very happy yesterday." 
"Yes, very happy yesterday," she answered in a 
melancholy tone, " but to-day I have been reflecting 
on the destiny of this child." In 1823, her hus- 
band's successes in the Spanish campaign gave her 
pleasure, but in thinking of the deliverance of 
Ferdinand VII., her mind reverted to the sad fate 
of Louis XVI. One of her letters ends with the 
touching exclamation: "It is proved, then, that an 
unfortunate king may be rescued." 

The Duchess of Angouleme had foreseen the revo- 
lution of 1830. When Charles X. parted with M. 
de Villele, she had said : " It is true, then, that you 
are allowing Villele to leave you. My father, to-day 
you are taking the first step down from the throne." 
She was travelling when the King signed the orders 
which were the cause of his fall. She was unable to 
rejoin him until after the three days of July. In 



INTRODUCTION 19 



1830 as in 1815, fate had removed the only woman 
who might have saved the royal cause. 

A new and final series of exiles then began for 
the unfortunate Princess which was not to end with 
her life, for she is exiled even in her grave. At 
Lullworth, Holyrood, Prague, Kirchberg, and Goritz, 
she remained what she had always been, a model of 
resignation and dignity. Chateaubriand has said: 
" The most precious moments of our life were those 
which Madame the Dauphiness permitted us to 
spend near her. Heaven had deposited a treasure 
of magnanimity and religion in the depths of that 
soul which even the prodigalities of misfortune 
could not exhaust. For once, then, we met a soul 
sufficiently lofty to permit us to express, without 
fear of wounding it, what we think concerning the 
future of society. One could talk about the fate 
of empires to the Dauphiness, because she could, 
without regret, see all the kingdoms of earth pass 
away at the feet of her virtue, as many of them had 
dwindled into nothingness at the feet of her race." 

The Duchess of Angouleme lost her husband June 
1, 1844. The Count of Chambord induced her to 
remain with him. He was more attached to her 
than to his own mother. As her husband, after the 
abdication of Charles X. had found himself King for 
a moment before abdicating himself, she was never 
addressed except as Queen. Men of all parties held 
her in profound esteem. Some time after the revo- 
lution of February 24, 1848, she received a visit 



20 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULtUE 

from M. Charles Didier, a republican. "Madame," 
said the traveller, " you cannot possibly have failed 
to see the finger of God in the downfall of Louis 
Philippe." "It is in everything," she answered. 
Her interlocutor was struck with the patriotic senti- 
ments she displayed. "One might have supposed," 
he has written, "that after suffering so much in 
France and at the hands of Frenchmen, she must 
hold the country and its inhabitants in aversion; 
but nothing of the kind. Strange phenomenon! 
The more she has suffered in France and by France, 
the more she is attached to it. She will permit no 
one to assail it in her presence ; she never speaks of 
it herself but with love and regret. Her last wish, 
as she often says, is to be buried in France. Surely 
a more ardent patriotism was never seen; such a 
passion for one's native land recalls that of Foscari, 
who adored Venice in the midst of the tortures that 
Venice inflicted on him." The death of the daughter 
of Louis XVI. was as saintly as her life had been. 
She breathed her last sigh at Frohsdorff, October 18, 
1851, aged seventy-two years and ten months. She 
was buried at Goritz, in the Franciscan chapel, at 
the side of Charles X. and the Duke of Angouleme. 
This inscription was placed on her sepulchral stone : 
" vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite^ et 
videte si est dolor sicut dolor meusf^'' — O, all ye that 
pass by, attend and see whether any sorrow is like 
unto my sorrow ! 

We have just summarized the career of the 



INTRODUCTION 21 



Duchess of Angoul^me. Let us briefly examine that 
of the Duchess of Berry. 



Ill 



Marie Caroline Ferdinande Louise came into the 
world at Naples, September 5, 1798. Her grand- 
father was the King of the Two Sicilies, and her 
grandmother, Marie Caroline, sister of Marie Antoi- 
nette, Queen of France. Her father, the brother 
of the Princess Marie Amelie, afterwards to be 
Queen of the French, was Fran9ois Xavier Joseph, 
who was Prince Royal of Naples at the time of 
her birth, and became King of the Two Sicilies 
in 1825. Her mother was the Austrian Archduch- 
ess Marie Clementine, daughter of the Emperor 
Leopold 11. , and aunt to the Archduchess Marie 
Louise, the future wife of the Emperor Napoleon. 
The infancy of the Duchess of Berry was marked 
by revolutions and catastrophes. At two years old 
the little Princess had already crossed the sea 
twice, flying with her family and returning with 
them to Naples. In 1806, she departed again for 
Palermo. Her grandfather was then reigning in 
Sicily only. After the events of 1815, he regained 
possession of his double sceptre. The destiny of 
the Princess shone at this time with the most vivid 
lustre. In 1816, she espoused the Duke of Berry, 
second son of Monsieur, who was to reign under the 
title of Charles X., and nephew of Louis XVI. and 



22 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

Louis XVIII. The Bourbons of France and Naples 
thrilled with joy. 

On May 30, the young and charming Princess 
made her triumphal entry into the harbor of Mar- 
seilles in a gilded barque, manned by twenty-four 
rowers dressed in white satin, with blue and gold 
scarfs, sitting upon a crimson velvet dais. The 
same woman will be tracked like a wild beast six- 
teen years later, and will make her escape in the 
disguise of a servant. The boat advances through 
a forest of other vessels covered with verdure. All 
the windows are adorned with women, flags, and 
garlands. Cannons roar, bells peal, the whole city 
rings with acclamations. Marseilles rivals Italy in 
enthusiasm and sunshine. The Duchess, whose 
progress across France has been a series of ovations, 
arrives at the picturesque and poetic forest of Fon- 
tainebleau on June 15. There she finds the royal 
family at the crossroads of La Croix and Saint 
H^rem. It is a day of enchantments and illusions. 
The next day. Corpus Christi, the impatiently 
expected Princess makes her solemn entry into 
Paris. She passes through streets strewn with 
flowers, where she sees temporary altars, triumphal 
arches, and memorials both religious and monarchi- 
cal. The prefect of the Seine addresses her in these 
words, to which the future will give an ironical 
contradiction : " August Princess, issue of the same 
blood as our own Princes, tried like them by afflic- 
tion, triumphant like them over the vicissitudes 



INTRODUCTION 23 



which have desolated the world, new pledge of their 
lawful rights and of a return to principle, behold 
the intoxicating joy of a whole people whose desires 
and hopes invoke a succession of princes, doubly 
issuing through you from an adored race. Increase 
the happiness of an august family whom we long to 
see flourish, even at the expense of our lives. These 
walls were the cradle of your noble ancestors. May 
they offer you nothing but pleasure and happiness, 
as they will never cease to present the image of love 
and devotion to their sovereigns ! " 

The marriage is celebrated at Notre Dame, June 
17. Perhaps the ancient metropolitan church has 
never been so resplendent. Paris is enchanted with 
the Princess. The Princess is enchanted with Paris. 
She and her husband install themselves at the 
Elys^e, a more agreeable, commodious, and gayer 
abode than the Tuileries. There she leads a happy 
life and looks confidently toward the future. She 
does not meddle with politics, but dances, amuses 
herself, visits the studios, the theatres, and the 
court, troubles herself very little about etiquette, 
and seems more like a private person than a prin- 
cess. But gloomy presentiments very soon trouble 
her youthful, almost infantine, gaiety. July 13, 
1817, she is delivered of a daughter who dies the 
next day; September 13, 1818, of a son prematurely 
born, who lives but two hours. This date of the 
13th is to reappear in her destiny. 

Paris is at the height of the carnival on February 



24 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

13, 1820. It is the last Sunday before Lent. For 
several days balls and spectacles have succeeded each 
other with extraordinary animation. The Duke and 
Duchess of Berry go to the Opera. They receive a 
most cordial welcome. The representation is very 
brilliant, but the Duchess, slightly fatigued in con- 
sequence of a ball she had attended the previous 
evening, leaves before it is over. The Duke goes 
with her to her carriage, but just as he is about to 
re-enter the hall, he is stabbed with a poniard. The 
Duchess hears her husband's agonizing cry. Her 
carriage is still before the door. She hastily descends 
from it, at the moment when the Duke, drawing the 
weapon from his wound, gives it to M. de M^snard, 
exclaiming: "I am a dead man. A priest! . . . 
Come, my wife, let me die in your arms ! " The 
Princess is covered with her husband's blood. She 
is at first taken to the small salon belonging to her 
box. The crime has been so quickly done that the 
news of it has not yet reached the body of the theatre. 
The second act of a ballet is going on. Through a 
pane of glass which looked into the box from the 
salon, the dances could still be seen. Joyous music 
was sounding while the victim lay dying. The 
King does not arrive until five o'clock in the morn- 
ing. "Pardon the man who stabbed me! " says the 
Duke to him. " Holy Virgin, intercede for me. . . . 
O my country ! . . . Unhappy France ! " An hour 
later he renders his last sigh. He was born Janu- 
ary 24, 1778. 



INTRODUCTION 25 



Pregnant with an infant who will be the Duke of 
Bordeaux, the widow of twenty-one years in her long 
mourning veil excites universal sympathy and pity. 
Persuaded that it is her mission to give France a 
king, and religious after the Italian fashion, she 
believes herself especially protected by Saint Louis. 
She has seen in a dream this ancestor of whom the 
Bourbon family is so proud, and he has promised her 
a son. 

The Child of Europe, the Child of Miracle, as 
the newly born was called, came into the world at 
the palace of the Tuileries, September 29, 1820. 
Royalist France experienced a delirium of joy. All 
the poets, with Victor Hugo and Lamartine at their 
head, composed enthusiastic odes that resemble 
hymns of thanksgiving. On all sides the Duchess 
of Berry is treated as a heroine, as a providential 
being who holds a rank midway between a woman 
and an angel. The chivalrous and sentimental 
rhetoric of the period passes all bounds in its hyper- 
boles of praise. During the last ten years of the 
Restoration, the popularity of the Princess is im- 
mense. People say that a more amiable woman was 
never seen. Her daughter and her son, two inter- 
esting and beautiful children, form her double 
coronet. The Orleans family show her a respectful 
tenderness. She is the movement, life, and anima- 
tion of the court. Thanks to her, the Marsan Pavil- 
ion at the Tuileries becomes an enchanting residence. 
The little court, as her narrow circle of personal 



26 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOXTLUmE 

adherents is called, is the most agreeable and brill- 
iant of social centres. She sets the fashion. She 
protects commerce and the arts. She saves the 
Gymnase theatre by permitting it to be called the 
theatre of Madame. She rides in the first omnibus 
that comes along. She makes the coast of Dieppe a 
fashionable resort. She is a beneficent fairy whose 
wand of gold and diamonds brings good fortune to 
all whom it touches. This Princess who seems as 
if she were made to preside at tournaments and to 
inspire the chroniclers of the Renaissance, and yet 
who is modern by the eclecticism of her ideas, her 
scorn of etiquette, her kindly familiarity, her bour- 
geois gaiety, and her simple tastes and habits, smiles 
equally on imperial and royalist celebrities. If 
any woman could disarm the hatreds and rancors of 
the most implacable enemies of the monarchy, it 
would be she. 

In 1828, the fascinating Duchess makes a tri- 
umphal journey in Vendue. The defenders of throne 
and altar greet her with acclamations. Old relics of 
Catholic and royal armies, standards riddled with 
balls and worn by battles, cemeteries where the 
white flag drapes the tombs of those who died for 
the King in the battle of giants, as Napoleon called 
that formidable struggle whose Berdsina was the 
passage of the Loire, bells ringing in every parish, 
frenzied cries of joy, incessantly renewed ovations, 
all excite the imagination of the Princess, who 
passes through the region on horseback. The peas- 



INTRODUCTION 27 



ants, seeing how fearlessly she manages her horse in 
the midst of the discharges of musketry which salute 
her as she passes, cry : " Ah ! the brave little woman ! 
that one isn't afraid ! " She considers every peasant 
a knight-errant, who, if need were, would shed the 
last drop of his blood for her, and she promises the 
Vend^ans that if fortune ever should forsake her, 
she will come back to seek an asylum and confide to 
them the royal cause. Her journey in 1828 will be 
the germ of her expedition in 1832. 

The Duchess of Berry is valor itself. When she 
sees Charles X., whom old age had rendered dull 
and heavy, yield so readily to the revolution, she 
becomes irritated and indignant. On July 29, 1830, 
she is in the upper story of the palace of Saint Cloud, 
looking through a spyglass toward Paris, whose 
monuments define themselves in the distance against 
a cloudless sky. All at once, she no longer sees the 
white flag on the roof of the Tuileries. Another 
standard has replaced it. "Ah! my God!" she 
cries, "I perceive the tricolored flag!" At Saint 
Cloud, as at Rambouillet, she entreats Charles X. to 
let her start for Paris with her son. The old King 
obstinately refuses. "Very well," says she, "I will 
not take Henri; I will go alone." All her entreaties 
are in vain. They keep her back by force. The 
cause of the elder branch of the Bourbons is forever 
lost! 

On arriving in Scotland, the Duchess is unable to 
endure exile beneath that misty and gloomy sky. 



28 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULJ^ME 

The castle of Holyrood, the melancholy abode of the 
Stuarts, inspires her with profound repugnance. 
Moreover, she is unwilling that the Bourbons of the 
elder branch should end like the descendants of 
Charles I. and James II. Prudent counsels seem to 
her marks of weakness and cowardice. She quits 
the society gathered around Charles X., because it 
is out of harmony with her ardent soul, and goes 
to prepare, under the brilliant skies of Italy, a 
kind of romantic imitation of the return from Elba. 
The most sensible of the legitimists vainly seek to 
dissuade her from her enterprise. She listens only 
to lovers of adventure, to hot heads, to officers who 
have resigned from the royal guard and who fret at 
their enforced inaction, to penniless nobles. They 
tell her that the monarchy of July is dying in its 
cradle, and that the mother of Henri V. would have 
but to touch the soil of France to be able to say, like 
Caesar: Veni, vidi^ vici. She believes it. The 
mirage of the emigration has deceived her. She 
naively imagines that she is going to be the greatest 
heroine of modern times ; that she will surpass the 
glories of Jeanne d' Arc and Jeanne Hachette; that 
she will be able to reconquer the most beautiful crown 
in the universe for her son, and thus justify all the 
adulations of which she had been the object in her 
prosperous days. Joyous and full of confidence, she 
sets out on her adventurous expedition as if it were 
a hunting-party, and impatiently awaits the danger 
which has charms for a nature so nervous and 
desirous of emotions. 



INTBODUCTION 29 



April 26, 1832, at three o'clock in the morning, 
she embarks near Massa on the Carlo Alberto^ a ship 
which she has chartered. In the night of April 
28-29, she arrives in the straits of Planier, in Pro- 
vence. But what a difference since the day, sixteen 
years before, when she entered the harbor of Mar- 
seilles in such majestic pomp! But this contrast 
only stimulates her. She finds nothing discourag- 
ing. The rising prepared by the Marseilles voyagers 
is a failure. She is entreated to leave France ; she 
refuses, and by night and on foot, walking silently 
under a moonless and starless sky, she starts for 
Vendue, where she intends to fight. All her pro- 
jects come to nought. Instead of a general armed 
rising, there are only partial movements which the 
troops of King Louis Philippe easily repress. A 
fugitive, hunted by the police, obliged to disguise 
herself as a peasant and soil her hands with dust 
lest their whiteness should betray her, she enters 
Nantes on a market day, June 9, 1832, with only 
one companion. Mademoiselle Eulalie de Kersabiec, 
disguised like herself, and takes refuge in the house 
of the Demoiselles Duguigny, rue Haute-du-Chateau. 
She will live there five months, in a garret on the 
third story, using a folding-chair by way of a bed, 
never stirring out of doors, and fearing to be dis- 
covered at every minute. 

At six in the evening of November 7, 1832, as the 
Princess is looking at an unclouded sky through the 
dormer window of her garret, she hears the noise of 



30 THE DUCHESS OF ANOOULEME 

many footsteps. They are those of troops coming 
to surround the house. It happens to have, and it 
was on that account the Duchess had chosen it as a 
refuge, a secret hiding-place, an old relic of the 
Terror of 1793, which during the judicial drownings 
at Nantes had more than once offered an asylum to 
fugitive or proscribed persons. It is contrived in 
one of the garrets of the third story. The wall of a 
chimney built in one of the corners of the garret 
closes it in front, and at the back is the exterior wall 
of the house, on which rest the rafters that form the 
upper part of the hiding-place. The back of the chim- 
ney, which may be opened at will, gives access to it. 
This retreat is about eighteen inches wide at one of 
its extremities, and from eight to ten at the other, 
and from three to tliree and a half feet long. The 
height goes on decreasing toward its narrowest 
extremity, so that a man could hardly stand erect at 
that part even by putting his head between the 
rafters. It is here that the Duchess crouches down 
with three other persons, — Count de Mesnard, M. 
Guibourg, and Mademoiselle Stylite de Kersabiec. 
She has but just entered it when the garret is invaded 
bysoldiers and police commissioners. The whole house 
is searched. Sappers and masons sound the walls 
and floors with great blows of hatchets and hammers. 
They strike so hard that pieces of plaster loosen and 
fall on the Duchess in the hiding-place, where she 
listens to the oaths of the men, who are tired and 
furious over their futile search. " We are going to 



INTRODUCTION 31 



be torn to pieces," she saj's in a whisper to her com- 
panions in this close captivity; "all is over. Ah! 
my poor children ! And yet it is on my account that 
you are in this frightful position." The search re- 
laxes. It is believed that the Duchess has escaped. 
Even she hopes she will be saved. But an unex- 
pected incident ruins all. The weather is cold. 
The gendarmes who remain in the garret kindle a 
large fire in the chimney which forms part of the 
hiding-place. Presently the wall becomes too hot 
to be touched by the hand. The back is reddened 
by the flames. The prisoners are threatened with 
suffocation or burning alive. 

Already the gown of the Duchess has taken fire 
twice. She has extinguished it with her hands, 
without complaining of the burns, whose scars she 
bears for a long time. It catches fire again. She puts 
it out. But the back of the chimney creaks. " Who 
is there?" says a gendarme. Mademoiselle Stylite 
de Kersabiec responds: "We surrender; we are 
going to open the back of the chimney ; put out the 
fire." It is half-past nine in the morning. The 
prisoners have been without food and almost with- 
out air, and suffering unspeakable agonies for sixteen 
hours. A few seconds longer, and they would have 
died. The gendarmes kick the faggots aside, and the 
Duchess comes out first, touching perforce the still 
scorching hearth. 

Behold this elegant, admired, and adulated Prin- 
cess, this enchantress who has passed under so many 



32 THE DUCHESS OF ANQOULEME 

triumphal arches and been so often buried under an 
avalanche of flowers, this graceful magician, this 
good fairy who has presided at such magnificent 
and brilliant fetes at the Elys^e and the Tuileries, 
at Compiegne and Fontainebleau ; behold the heir- 
ess of Saint Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV., 
the Regent of France, stepping from her hiding- 
place on still burning cinders, her dress in rags, 
her hands and feet all blistered ; behold her a pris- 
oner, delivered up, sold for a little gold by the 
most infamous of traitors, by a man whom she had 
loaded with benefits, by Deutz, that new Judas, to 
whom Victor Hugo has addressed this avenging apos- 
trophe : — 

" O wretch ! did nothing in thy soul then say 
That to be banned is reverend for aye ; 
That breasts at which we once have nourished been 
We may not smite : the valet of a queen 
May sell her not to other wretch at will : 
That, queen no more, she is a woman still ! " 

The thing is done ; the bargain concluded by M. 
Thiers with this traitor is consummated. The Duch- 
ess loses neither her self-possession nor her dignity 
in this fatal moment. Sixteen hours of torture have 
not been able to exhaust her courage. She sends 
for General Damoncourt. He enters: "General," 
she says calmly, " I have done what a mother could 
to reconquer the inheritance of her son." He offers 
his arm to conduct her to the chateau of Nantes, 
where she is to be incarcerated. "Ah! general," 



INTRODUCTION 33 



she exclaims, giving a final glance at the back of the 
fatal chimney before quitting the house, " if you had 
not made war on me in the Saint Lawrence style, 
which was rather ungenerous in a soldier, by the 
way, you wouldn't have me under your arm at this 
moment." 

From the chateau of Nantes the prisoner is taken 
to the citadel of Blaye. The story of her touching 
captivity there will be narrated by one of her physi- 
cians, the witty Doctor M^nidre. Nothing gives a 
better idea of the Duchess than the journal kept by 
this physician, a sagacious observer, but benevolent 
and at times even affected by his illustrious and 
always amiable patient. Among her jailers, if such 
a name may ever be applied to heroes, there were a 
general and a young officer, both of whom afterwards 
became marshals of France. One of them was to be 
the victor of Isly, and the other of the Alma. Each 
of them has given an account in his letters of the 
captivity of the Duchess and her psychological con- 
dition, with its alternations of anger and gaiety, of 
groans and smiles. Her situation becomes more 
complicated through an incident which no one had 
foreseen and in which her enemies find their account. 
The government learns that she is pregnant, and 
decrees that the child shall be born in the citadel of 
Blaye. At Paris, the ministers of Louis Philippe 
have decided that the accouchement shall be verified 
by their functionaries. They fancy it will be a 
triumph for the monarchy of July. 



34 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

The Duchess of Berry is in despair. But how is 
she to deny the evidence ? She is obliged to submit. 
Then she owns that she has contracted a secret mar- 
riage with a Neapolitan diplomat, Count Lucchesi 
Palli, and on May 10, 1833, she is delivered of a 
daughter in the citadel of Blaye. She leaves her 
prison, at last, on June 8, and embarks for Sicily. 
After so many sufferings she is free. But Charles 
X. has a grudge against her. It is not easy to bring 
about a reconciliation between her and the old mon- 
arch. Chateaubriand undertakes this delicate nego- 
tiation: "Yes," he writes, "I will depart on the last 
and most glorious of my embassies ; I will go, on the 
part of the prisoner of Blaye, to find the prisoner of 
the Temple; I will go to negotiate a new family 
compact, to bear the embraces of a captive mother to 
her exiled children, and to present the letters by 
which courage and misfortune have accredited me to 
innocence and virtue." 

Poor mother ! Even her own family were not very 
grateful for all she had endured on behalf of her 
son's cause. Princesses are certainly unfortunate 
in the France of the nineteenth century. If they do 
not resist revolutions, they are accused of weakness ; 
if they struggle, their resistance is accounted folly. 
Charles X., who had been so timid in 1830, regarded 
the energy of a woman as an indirect criticism of his 
own conduct, and the austere Duchess of AngoulSme, 
who understood the Vend^an expedition, and admired 
the courage of the heroine, could not comprehend 



INTRODUCTION 35 



the feminine weakness of which so cruel an advan- 
tage had been taken by the ministers of Louis 
Philippe. However, the little court of the exiled 
monarch adopted a milder view. The reconciliation 
took place, but it was more official than actual. 
The political career of the Duchess of Berry was 
ended. She no longer saw her son except at long 
intervals, a few days in a year, while the Prince 
never quitted, we might say, the Duchess of Angou- 
ISme, who was like a second mother to him, more 
influential and more regarded than the real one. 

The Duchess of Berry passed in comparative tran- 
quillity the last years of a life whose beginnings and 
whose prime had been so stormy. She lived very 
happily with Count Lucchesi Palli, by whom she 
had several children, and who regarded her with all 
the deferential esteem of a prince-consort. But in 
Styria, where she owned the chateau of Bruns^e, 
near Gratz; and in Venice, where in 1843 she 
bought the fine Vendramini palace, on the Grand 
Canal, she received with extreme affability, and the 
elegance of her entertainments recalled the epoch 
when she inhabited the Elys^e and the Pavilion of 
Marsan. In 1847, she gave private theatricals at 
Venice, and among the actors and spectators were 
twenty-seven persons belonging to imperial or royal 
families. Generous beyond her means, she expended 
a great deal, but her son paid the debts she had con- 
tracted through excessive charity. In her place, a 
woman of severe character would have lived in per- 



36 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

petual mourning; a vindictive woman would have 
conceived a horror of human nature. The Duchess 
of Berry, on the contrary, after so many catastrophes, 
sorrows, and deceptions, lost not one of those gra- 
cious and attractive qualities which had caused her 
success in France. She continued to love literature 
and the arts, society and the world. Up to the very 
end she preserved that benevolence, indulgence, and 
amenity which characterize veritable great ladies. 
A princess from head to foot, she always played her 
part with exquisite distinction, as well in exile as on 
the steps of the throne. She had found out that 
grievances are not well-bred. A complaint against 
destiny seemed unworthy of a race so noble as hers. 
In the latter years of her life, nevertheless, she 
was subjected to trials no less painful than those of 
her youth. March 26, 1854, the Duke of Parma, 
the husband of the Princess Louise, her daughter by 
the Duke of Berry, was mortally wounded by the 
stiletto of an assassin. Louvel's crime was thus 
repeated after an interval of thirty-four years. The 
husband and the son-in-law of the Duchess of Berry 
passed through the same majestic and pious death- 
agony. After having blessed his four children, — 
Prince Robert, Princess Marguerite, Princess Alixe, 
and Count de Bardi, — the Duke of Parma expressed 
the same sentiments as Louvel's victim. A few days 
after the tragic death of his brother-in-law, the 
Count of Chambord wrote : " He who has just been 
so cruelly stricken had no words but those of for- 



INTRODUCTION 37 



giveness for his murderer, and never ceased until 
his last sigh to show admirable faith, piety, courage, 
and Christian resignation. This is our only consola- 
tion under an affliction as frightful as it was unfore- 
seen." In 1864, two new misfortunes came to rend 
the heart of the Duchess of Berry. February 1, 
she lost her good and charming daughter, the Prin- 
cess Louise of France, Duchess of Parma, who died 
at the age of forty-four; and exactly two months 
later, on April 1, her husband. Count Hector Luc- 
chesi Palli, Duke Delia Grazia. This double afflic- 
tion reduced her to despair. 

"I have been so tried," she wrote, "that my poor 
head feels the effects of it. It made me nearly mad 
to lose my good and saintly daughter ; but the kind 
attentions of the Duke had calmed me somewhat 
when God recalled him to himself. He died in my 
arms like a saint, surrounded by his children, smiling 
at me, and pointing to heaven. Yes, dear friend, 
you are right in saying that our only consolation is 
to raise our eyes to heaven, where those we love 
await us. But for us, on earth, what sorrows! " 

As the woman who had known so many griefs and 
endured so many trials advanced in life, her relig- 
ious sentiments became more strongly marked. Mis- 
fortune, that great master, had given her so many 
lessons! She could make so many reflections on 
human vicissitudes, this great-niece of Queen Marie 
Antoinette, this widow of an assassinated prince, 
this mother of a disinherited prince, this mother-in- 



38 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

law of a poniarded son-in-law, this daughter-in-law 
of Charles X., this cousin-german of the Empress 
Marie Louise, this niece of Queen Marie Am^lie! 
She died suddenly at Brunsde, April 16, 1870, of 
apoplexy, the same death as that of her grandmother, 
Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples. She was seventy- 
one years old. If she had been living in 1873, no 
doubt she would have given her son different coun- 
sels from those he followed. But Providence had 
decided that the mission of the elder branch of 
Bourbons was finished in France. 

On the whole, what interesting types the Duch- 
ess of Angouleme and the Duchess of Berry are I 
What personifications of one of the most instructive 
and affecting epochs of history! What souvenirs, 
dramas, and legends are suggested by the names of 
these two women! The Duchess of Angouleme is 
the Temple, the Terror, the Exile, the Restoration, 
at first with its infatuations, and afterwards with 
its bitterness, its deceptions, and its cataclysms. 
The Duchess of Berry is hope speedily disappointed, 
illusion quickly dispelled; the enchantment of a 
society which was amiable and gracious in spite of 
its weaknesses, errors, and infatuations; the spell 
of an epoch when great faults were committed, 
but which was able to unite the elegance of the 
old regime to the guarantees of modern liberty, 
to make both the court and the tribune brilliant, 
to produce a marvellous harvest of great achieve- 
ments, and recommend itself to posterity by an 



INTRODUCTION 39 



incomparable group of men of talent and genius. 
The Duchess of Angouleme is the purity of tra- 
dition, the majesty of the past, the legend of sanc- 
tity and sorrow. The Duchess of Berry, a type 
less venerable but more feminine, is the image of a 
convulsed society, the transition between the past 
and the future, the woman of contrasts, who some- 
times appears all glittering in brocade and the crown 
diamonds beneath the vaulted roof of Notre Dame, 
and sometimes in a peasant's gown on the road to 
Nantes, or vainly seeking refuge in the narrow 
hiding-place of the mysterious house of the Demoi- 
selles Duguigny. By turns she is the triumphant 
betrothed, the flattered wife, the idolized mother, the 
fugitive, the vanquished, the proscribed, who, after 
anguish of all descriptions, falls into the snares of 
treason and infamy. Around these two women, the 
principal actors in this great historic drama, what 
unlike figures group themselves : the executioners of 
the Terror, the emigres, the soldiers of the royal 
guard, the Vend^ans, the innumerable courtiers of 
the Tuileries and the rare courtiers of the Exile, 
who assist respectfully at the last days and the 
obsequies of the old French monarchy! 

There is another woman whom we shall have to 
consider also, for she likewise is a woman of the 
Tuileries. where she resided in her childhood, from 
1820 to 1830. This is the Princess Louise of 
France, who was born September 2, 1819, a year 
before her brother, the Duke of Bordeaux. Old men 



40 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

who lived in Paris at the time of the Restoration 
recall the sympathy aroused by the pretty little 
Princess when she was seen at the Tuileries, run- 
ning along the terrace beside the water, holding her 
brother by the hand, or walking beneath the trees 
in the beautiful park of Saint Cloud. Her mother 
idolized her. From the citadel of Blaye the prisoner 
wrote to the author of the Genie du Christianisme : 
"I beg you to convey to my dear children the 
expression of my affection for them. Tell Henri 
especially that I count more than ever on his efforts 
to become daily more worthy of the admiration and 
love of the French people. Tell Louise how happy 
I would be to embrace her, and that her letters are 
my only consolation." After the revolution of 1830, 
the young Princess never quitted her aunt, the 
Duchess of Angouleme, until her marriage. Cha- 
teaubriand, who in 1833 made a journey to Prague, 
the asylum of the exiled Bourbons, wrote at that 
time : " I saw the brother and sister, like two pretty 
gazelles, straying amidst the ruins. Mademoiselle 
resembles her father somewhat; her hair is fair, and 
her blue eyes have a fine expression. There is in 
her entire person a blending of the child, the young 
girl, and the princess. She looks at you, she lowers 
her eyes, she smiles with native coquetry; one is at 
a loss whether to tell her a fairy tale or to address 
her respectfully as one would a queen." 

On November 10, 1845, a year before the marriage 
of her brother, the Count of Chambord, the Princess 



IN TR on UCTION 41 



Louise espoused the hereditary Prince of Lucca, a 
scion like herself of the house of Bourbon, whose 
father reigned in the duchy of Lucca while waiting 
for the reversion of that of Parma, to which the 
Empress Marie Louise had only a life title. The 
widow of Napoleon died in 1847, and the Duke 
Charles Louis, ceding the duchy of Lucca to Tus- 
cany, became Duke of Parma. He was driven out 
of his new dominions by an insurrection in 1849, 
and abdicated in favor of his son, Charles IIL, hus- 
band of the Princess Louise of France. The analo- 
gies between the destinies of this Princess and her 
mother are striking. Like the Duchess of Berry, 
she mourned her husband, stabbed by an assassin; 
like the Duchess of Berry, she energetically defended 
the rights of her son. But while the Duchess of 
Berry had been regent only in name, the Duchess of 
Parma was so in fact from 1854 to 1860, in the name 
of her son, the young Duke of Parma. She gov- 
erned the country with rare intelligence. But 
fatality pursued her race. The movement for unity 
swept away the little throne of Parma. Duke 
Robert had the same fate as his uncle the Count of 
Chambord, and in 1860, in spite of his mother's 
protests, his states were annexed to the new king- 
dom of Italy. 

The history we are beginning is a funeral oration, 
but one which has its gay and luminous passages ; a 
tragi-comedy wherein, as in human life, smiles blend 
with tears, hope with discouragement, joy with sor- 



42 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

row. We shall not draw our materials simply from 
books, memoirs, manuscripts, newspapers, official 
acts, and private letters. We shall seek informa- 
tion, hitherto unpublished, from many persons hon- 
ored by intimacy with the princesses of whom we 
desire to paint true portraits, and not fancy sketches. 
The great advantage of dealing with subjects near 
our own time is that one may consult ocular wit- 
nesses of most of the events which must be described, 
and that the check exercised by these persons neces- 
sitates an absolute respect for truth. Formerly, 
writers hesitated to treat contemporary history. 
To-day, they prefer it to that of distant ages. Every 
time a man who has had a part to play dies, we say: 
" What a misfortune not to have profited enough yet 
by his souvenirs! " Is not history like a vast legal 
inquiry, which demands that the greatest possible 
number of witnesses shall be summoned ? 

The eighteenth century is known at present, not 
merely in its ensemble, but in its minute details. 
It is the nineteenth that demands investigation. If 
one brings to such studies that partisan spirit which 
has the sorry privilege of spoiling all it touches, he 
will accomplish nothing serious ; but if he remains 
faithful to the motto: "Truth, nothing but the 
truth, all the truth"; if he observes conscientiously; 
if while compassionating sufferings and recounting 
extenuating circumstances together with the faults 
he chronicles, he bases his conclusions on the laws 
of morality, justice, and honor, — he may fearlessly 



INTRODUCTION 43 



treat subjects which at first glance appear difficult. 
Doubtless, what relates to the private history of 
celebrated princesses needs particularly delicate 
treatment. Their biographers ought never to forget 
what is due to women ; above all, to unhappy women. 
But to continue after their misfortunes the flattery 
of which they were the victims in their days of 
prosperity would not be to pay a real homage to 
their memory. Respect does not exclude freedom, 
and the historian ought never to transform himself 
into a courtier. 



FIRST PART 
THE CAPTIVITY 



THE TEIVIPLE TOWER 

THE most ardent revolutionists and those most 
wrought upon by hatred and regicidal passions 
were not able to pass the tower of the Temple when 
the Terror was at its height, without experiencing 
certain qualms. The vast skeleton of stone dating 
from the twelfth century and recalling the baleful 
history of the Order of Templars, wore an aspect 
more dismal and fantastic than ever. This dungeon, 
which succeeded Versailles and the Tuileries, for the 
descendants of Louis XIV. seemed a fatal spot — 
where Louis XVI. had not been since the morning 
of January 21, 1793, but where his Queen, Marie 
Antoinette, her sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth, 
her daughter, Madame Royale (the future Duchess 
of Angouleme), and his son, whom the royalists of 
France and all Europe styled Louis XVII., but 
whom his jailers called Capet, still remained. It 
was known in a vague sort of way that the royal 

46 



46 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

family endured indescribable sufferings in this 
accursed abode, and tears came into the eyes of 
royalists as they gazed at its gigantic walls: more 
than one republican sought in vain to escape a like 
emotion. Persons who had seen the royal family 
resplendent in gala carriages on days when they 
made triumphal visits to the good city of Paris, 
could not avoid reflections on the vicissitudes in 
human affairs, and on catastrophes which no har- 
binger of misfortune would have ventured to fore- 
bode. They recalled May 24, 1785, the day when 
the Queen, who had been delivered on the previous 
March 27, of the child destined to be called Louis 
XVII., had come to the Temple in a very different 
fashion. On that day the brilliant goddess — for, 
according to P^re Duchesne himself, people then 
regarded her as a divinity — made a ceremonious 
entry into Paris for the purpose of being churched. 
Her carriage, drawn by eight white horses, was 
escorted by fifty body-guards. The cannons of the 
Invalides thundered. She went to Notre Dame, then 
to Sainte Genevieve, and afterwards to the Tuileries, 
where she dined. In the evening she went to the 
Temple to supper. The entertainment ended by 
fireworks which the Count of Aranda set off, in the 
Queen's presence, on the top of his house situated 
on the Place Louis XV. What reflections are not 
awakened by those words : the Temple and the Place 
Louis XV. ! 

Marie Antoinette had always felt an instinctive 



TEE TEMPLE TO WEB . 47 

repugnance for the sombre dungeon around which so 
many gloomy memories lingered. She beheld it with 
vague uneasiness, as if affected by a presentiment. 
Nothing could be more dismal than this edifice, 
this scene prepared beforehand for the most sinister 
of historical di-amas. It formed a quadrangular 
dungeon one hundred and fifty feet in height, 
not counting the roof, and its walls were nine feet 
thick. It was flanked at each of its corners by a 
round tower, and accompanied on its north side by 
a small but solid mass of masonry, surmounted by 
two much lower towers. This pile, which was called 
the little tower, leaned against the large one, but 
had no interior communication with it. A profound 
melancholy overspread the tomb-like monument. It 
bore neither inscription nor ornament, but, freezing 
and accursed in appearance, it seemed like a spot 
haunted by spectres. 

The interior was, if possible, more gloomy still. 
The large tower was built in four stories, vaulted, 
and supported in the centre by a column rising from 
the bottom to the top. The ground-floor, where the 
municipal oflicers had their quarters, formed but one 
large room. The same thing was true of the first 
story, which was occupied by the body-guards. The 
second story, where the King had dwelt, and which 
was now the prison of his son, had been divided into 
four rooms by partitions. The third, an exact repro- 
duction of the second, was occupied by Marie 
Antoinette, her daughter, Madame Royale, and her 



48 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

sister-in-law, Madame Elisabeth. The ante-cham- 
ber, just above that of the apartment of Louis XVI., 
was preceded like it by two doors, one of oak and 
the other of iron. Its paper-hangings represented 
cut stones, laid one upon another. From these one 
passed into the Queen's chamber, hung with paper 
covered with pale zones of green and blue, and dimlj^ 
lighted by a grated window, concealed by an awn- 
ing. The floor was tiled in small squares. A clock 
on the chimney-piece represented Fortune and her 
wheel. Mere chance had provided this really sym- 
bolic timepiece. Marie Antoinette and the young 
Marie Th^r^se (Madame Royale) occupied this cham- 
ber in common, and adjoining it was the turret 
which served as their dressing-room. The Queen's 
bed stood just over the place where that of Louis 
XVI. had been on the floor below, and her dress- 
ing-room above the turret used as an oratory by 
Louis XVI. The chamber was furnished with 
Marie Antoinette's bed, her daughter's reversible 
couch, a mahogany commode, a small sofa, a mir- 
ror forty-five inches by thirty-six, and a wooden 
screen with four leaves. At the left was Madame 
Elisabeth's chamber, containing an iron bedstead, a 
commode, a walnut table, a fireplace, a mirror forty- 
five inches by thirty-two, two chairs, two armchairs 
covered with chintz, and two candlesticks. The 
fourth story, which comprised but one large room, 
was not occupied, but served as a storage place for 
disused furniture and boards. Between the battle- 



THE TEMPLE TOWER 49 

ments and the roof there was a gallery where the 
prisoners sometimes walked. The spaces between 
the battlements had been provided with solid win- 
dow-blinds, so that it was impossible to see or to be 
seen thence. 

Marie Antoinette left the Temple for the Concier- 
gerie at two in the morning. At that moment our 
present recital begins. The narrator shall be the 
heroine of this study, Marie Th^r^se of France, 
Madame Royale, the future Duchess of Angouleme. 
This young girl of fourteen kept a journal in her 
captivity which she called "A Narrative of what 
occurred at the Temple from August 13, 1792, 
until the death of the Dauphin, Louis XVII." 
Sainte-Beuve says of it: "She wrote it in a terse, 
correct, and simple style, without a mannerism 
or a superfluous word, as beseemed a profound heart 
and an upright mind, speaking in all sincerity 
of real griefs, of those truly ineffable griefs which 
surpass words. In it she unaffectedly forgets her- 
self as far as possible. All party spirit is disarmed 
and expires in reading this narrative, and gives 
place to profound pity and admiration. Gentleness, 
piety, and modesty animate the pages of this injured 
maiden." 

Marie Th^r^se thus describes the terrible night of 
August 2, 1793: "August 2, at two o'clock in the 
morning, they came to wake us up in order to read 
my mother the decree of the Convention, which 
ordered that, upon the requisition of the Procureur 



50 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

of the Commune, slie should he conducted to the 
Conciergerie for her trial. She listened to the read- 
ing of this decree without being affected or saying a 
single word. My aunt and I at once asked to follow 
my mother, but this favor was not granted. While 
she was packing up her clothes the municipal officers 
did not quit her; she was even obliged to dress in 
their presence. They demanded her pockets, which 
she gave them. They rummaged them and took all 
they contained, although it was nothing of impor- 
tance. They made a packet of the contents, which 
they said they would send to the revolutionary 
tribunal, where it would be opened before her. 
They left her nothing but a handkerchief and a 
smelling bottle, lest she should faint. My mother, 
^fter tenderly embracing me and recommending me 
to be courageous, to take good care of my aunt, and 
to obey her like a second mother, renewed the 
instructions my father had given me; then, throw- 
ing herself into my aunt's arms, she intrusted her 
children to her care. I made no answer, so greatly 
frightened was I at the thought that I was seeing 
her for the last time ; my aunt said a few words in a 
very low tone. Then my mother went away with- 
out looking at us, fearing, doubtless, that her cour- 
age might abandon her. She stopped again at the 
foot of the tower, because the municipal officers 
made a proces verbal there, in order to relieve the 
doorkeeper of responsibility for her person. In 
going out she struck her head against the wicket, 



THE TEMPLE TO WEB 51 

having forgotten to stoop: some one asked if she 
had hurt herself. " Oh, no! " she said; " nothing can 
hurt me now." 

It was thus that Marie Antoinette left the fatal 
dungeon where she had passed a twelvemonth of 
tears and anguish. When she learned that she was 
to be transferred thither, on August 13, 1792, she 
had exclaimed: "I always begged the Count of 
Artois to have that villanous tower of the Temple 
torn down; it always horrified me." 



II 

MADAME ELISABETH 

MARIE THERESE had now no companion in 
captivity except Madame Elisabeth. "My 
aunt and I," she has written in her journal, "were 
inconsolable, and we spent many days and nights in 
tears. It was a great consolation not to be separated 
from my aunt, whom I loved so much ; but alas ! all 
changed again, and I have lost her also." The 
daughter and sister of Louis XVI. were to remain 
together in the great tower of the Temple until May 
9, 1794, when Madame Elisabeth departed to the 
Conciergerie, the vestibule of the guillotine. Dur- 
ing nine months the young woman was to exhort her 
youthful niece and inspire her with the principles 
destined to be the rule of her whole existence. The 
Princess was the disciple of her aunt, who, if one 
may say so, was more than a mother to her. Madame 
Elisabeth! The mere name is like a symbol of 
piety. There are few figures in history as sympa- 
thetic and as sweet as hers; very few heads sur- 
rounded with so pure and luminous a halo. Born 
May 3, 1764, Madame Elisabeth was twenty-nine 
years old when Marie Antoinette confided her 

52 



MADAME ELISABETH 53 

daughter to her as she left the Temple for the Con- 
ciergerie. The Queen knew by experience what 
devotion, courage, and sanctity filled the heart of 
her sister-in-law. Losing both father and mother 
before her third year, Madame Elisabeth had poured 
out upon her brothers, and especially upon the eldest, 
who was afterwards to be styled Louis XVI., the 
affection she would have felt for her parents. In 
all the splendor of her youth and beauty, she had 
refused the most brilliant marriages. "I could 
marry no one," she said at the time, "but the son of 
a king, and the son of a king must reign over the 
dominions of his father; I would no longer be a 
Frenchwoman, and I am not willing to cease being 
so. I would rather stay here, at the foot of my 
brother's throne, than ascend any othei." She had 
been unwilling to seek a shelter from danger by 
following her brothers and her aunts into volun- 
tary exile. " To go away," said she, " would be 
both barbarous and stupid." Voluntarily associating 
herself with all the agonies of the downfall of 
royalty, she had been admirable for firmness, pres- 
ence of mind, and coolness during the Varennes 
journey. On August 20, 1792, when an immense 
crowd invaded the palace of the Tuileries, she had 
clung to her brother, declaring that nothing should 
induce her to leave him. Some of the assassins, 
mistaking her for Marie Antoinette, tried to thrust 
her through. "Stop! It is Madame Elisabeth!" 
cried several voices. "Why did you undeceive 



54 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULiSME 

them?" said the heroic Princess. "This mistake 
might have saved the Queen." At the Temple she 
was, as the Duchess of Tourzel has said, " the con- 
solation of her august family, and notably of the 
Queen, who, less pious than she when they entered 
the Temple, had the happiness to imitate that angel 
of virtue." Mgr. Darboy, whose end was as tragic 
as that of Madame Elisabeth, has said : " From this 
common captivity must be dated the intimate friend- 
ship established between the Queen and Madame 
Elisabeth ; the piety of the one and the virile resig- 
nation of the other formed a precious bond and 
mutual encouragement. Madame Elisabeth became 
a second mother to her nephew and niece, whom she 
surrounded with the most delicate and devoted cares. 
The unfortunate Louis XVI. likewise frequently 
recommended them to consider her as such, and 
when, on the day before his death, he parted from 
them for the last time, he placed them, and the 
Queen also, once more under the protection of his 
sister, the angel-guardian of the dismal prison." 

Every morning in the Temple, Madame Elisabeth 
recited this prayer which she had composed there: 
"What will happen to me to-day, O my God? I 
know not; all that I know is that nothing will 
happen which Thou hast not foreseen, regulated, 
willed, and ordained from all eternity. That suf- 
fices me. I adore Thy eternal and impenetrable 
designs; I submit to them with all my heart for 
love of Thee. I will all, I accept all, I make a sac- 



MADAME ELISABETH 55 

rifice to Thee of all, and I unite this sacrifice to that 
of my Divine Saviour. I ask Thee in His name and 
by His infinite merits for patience in my afiiictions 
and the perfect submission that is due to Thee for 
all Thou wiliest or permittest." God must have 
granted this prayer. Madame Elisabeth was to carry 
resignation, patience, and forgiveness of injuries to 
a truly sublime perfection. Let us return now to 
the journal of her niece, who learned in her school 
to become a saint likewise. 

"On the day after my mother's departure," writes 
Marie Th^rese, " my aunt earnestly entreated, in her 
own name as well as mine, to be allowed to rejoin 
her; but she could not obtain this, nor even learn 
any news of her. As my mother, who had never 
drunk anything but water, could not endure that of 
the Seine, because it made her ill, we begged the 
municipal officers to permit that of Ville-d'Avray, 
which was brought daily to the Temple, to be sent 
her. They consented, and took measures accord- 
ingly; but another of their colleagues arrived who 
opposed it. A few days afterward, in order to 
hear from us, she sent to ask for several things that 
were of use to her, and among others some knit- 
ting, because she had undertaken to make a pair 
of stockings for my brother ; we sent her all the silk 
and wool we could find, for we knew how well she 
loved to be employed; she had always been accus- 
tomed to work incessantly except at the hours when 
she had to appear in public. Thus she had made an 



56 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

enormous quantity of furniture covers, and even a 
carpet, besides an infinity of coarse woollen knitted 
tilings of all descriptions. We collected then, all 
we could; but we learned afterwards that nothing 
was sent, because they said they were afraid she 
would do herself harm with the needles." 

Marie Th^r^se was not less anxious about her 
brother's fate than about that of her mother. The 
child lived just underneath her, on the second floor 
of the great Temple tower, and yet all tidings of 
him were denied her. But the persecutor of the 
innocent victim, Simon the cobbler, raised his voice 
so high that his oaths and blasphemies could be 
heard on the third story. What crowned the afflic- 
tion of the pious Princess was that they sought to 
corrupt the child as well as to persecute him. " We 
heard him singing the Carmagnole, the Marseillaise, 
and a thousand other horrible things with Simon 
every day," writes Marie Therese. "Simon put a 
red cap on his head and a revolutionary jacket on 
his body; he made him sing at the windows so as to 
be heard by the guards, and taught him to utter 
frightful curses against God, his family, and the 
aristocrats. Happily, my mother did not hear all 
these horrors. "What pain they would have caused 
her! Before her departure they had sent for my 
brother's clothes; she had said she hoped that he 
would not leave off wearing mourning; but the 
first thing Simon did was to take off his black 
suit. The change in his food, and ill treatment, 



MADAME ELISABETH 57 

made my brother ill toward the end of August. 
Simon fed him horribly, and forced him to drink a 
great deal of wine, which he detested. All this 
soon brought on a fever; he took medicine which 
disagreed with him, and his health was completely 
ruined." 

The young Princess was also suffering about this 
time. "In the beginning of September," she says, 
" I had an indisposition which had no other cause than 
my anxiety about my mother's fate. I never heard 
a drum without fearing another second of September. 
We went up on the roof of the tower every day. 
The municipal officials visited us three times daily 
without fail ; but their severity did not prevent our 
getting news from outside, and especially of my 
mother, because we have always found some kindly 
souls in whom we inspired interest. We learned 
that my mother was accused of receiving commu- 
nications from without. We threw away at once 
our writings, our pencils, and all that we might still 
be writing, fearing that we might be forced to un- 
dress before Simon's wife, and that the things we 
had might compromise my mother; for we had always 
kept ink, paper, pens, and pencils in spite of the 
most rigorous searches made in our rooms and fur- 
niture. The municipals came to ask for underwear 
for my mother, but were not willing to give us any 
news of her. They took away from us the scraps of 
tapestry she had made, and those on which we were 
working, under the pretence that mysterious char- 



58 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

acters and a secret way of writing might be concealed 
in them." 

Meanwhile, the captivity of the two Princesses 
constantly became more rigorous. "Every day," 
s-djs Marie Therese, " we were visited and searched 
by the municipals ; on September 4, they arrived at 
four o'clock in the morning to make a thorough 
search and take away the silverware and china. 
They carried off all that we had remaining, and not 
finding it agree with their list, they had the base- 
ness to accuse us of having stolen some, when it 
was their own colleagues who had concealed it. 
They found a roll of louis behind the drawers in my 
aunt's commode, and they took possession of it on 
the spot with extraordinary eagerness." 

The two captives were soon deprived of almost 
everything. No manner of consideration or respect 
was any longer shown them. Their jailers were 
bent on treating them like criminals. September 
21, 1793, at one o'clock in the morning, Hubert, 
the substitute for the Communal attorney, presented 
himself with several municipals at the Temple to 
put into execution a decree ordaining that the two 
Princesses should be more tormented than they had 
been. They were to have but one chamber thence- 
forward, and Tison, who was still doing their heavy 
work, was to be imprisoned in one of the turrets. 
The captives were to be reduced to what was strictly 
necessary, and no one except the person who brought 
them wood and water was to enter their chamber. 



MADAME ELISABETH 59 

"We made our own beds," writes Marie Th^r^e in 
her journal, " and were obliged to sweep the cham- 
ber, which took a long time, so little were we used 
to it at first. We had no longer any one to wait 
upon us. Hebert said to my aunt that equality was 
the first law of the French Republic, and that as no 
other persons detained in prisons had servants, he 
was going to take away Tison. In order to treat us 
still more severely, we were deprived of whatever 
was convenient, for example, of the armchair used 
by my aunt; we could not have even what was 
necessary. When our meals arrived, the door was 
closed abruptly so that we might not see those who 
brought them. We could not obtain any news, 
unless by listening to the street-crier, and that very 
indistinctly, although we listened closely. We were 
forbidden to go up on the tower, and they took away 
our large sheets, fearing lest, in spite of the thick 
bars, we should get down from the windows; that 
was the pretext. They brought us coarse and dirty 
sheets." 

A decree of the Commune dated September 22, 
1793, provided that the nourishment of the prisoners 
should be greatly reduced. At the first meal which 
followed this decree, Madame Elisabeth, far from 
complaining, said to her niece : " This is the bread of 
poor people, and we are poor also. How many un- 
fortunates have still less ! " 

Let us now read in the journal of Marie Th^r^se 
the account of the examination to which she was 



60 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

subjected some days before her mother's execution : 
" October 8, at noon, as we were busy in setting our 
chamber to rights and dressing ourselves, Pache, 
Chaumette, and David, members of the Convention, 
with several municipals, arrived. My aunt did not 
open the door until she was dressed. Pache, turning 
to me, asked me to go down stairs. My aunt wished 
to follow me, but she was refused. She asked 
whether I would come up again. Chaumette assured 
her of it, saying : ' You may rely on the word of a 
good republican; she will come up.' I embraced 
my aunt, who was all in a tremble, and I went 
down. I was very much embarrassed. It was the 
first time I had ever found myself alone with men. 
I did not know what they wanted, but T recom- 
mended my soul to God." 

Madame Elisabeth trembled. Never, since her 
arrival at the Temple, had she been quite alone 
there. Deprived, one after another, of her brother, 
her nephew, and her sister-in-law, was she also to 
lose the last companion of her captivity? Was her 
niece also to be torn away and not return? Thus 
far, those who had gone down had not come up 
again. 

"When I came where my brother was," adds the 
young Princess, "I embraced him tenderly; but 
they tore him out of my arms, and told me to go 
into the other room. Chaumette made me sit 
down; he placed himself opposite me. . . . He 
questioned me afterwards about a multitude of 



MADAME ELISABETH 61 

villanous things of which my mother and my aunt 
were accused. I was overwhelmed by such horror, 
and so indignant, that in spite of the fear I experi- 
enced I could not help saying that it was infamous. 
There were some things which I did not under- 
stand; but what I did understand was so horrible 
that I wept with indignation. They interrogated 
me about Varennes, and put many questions to 
which I replied as best I could without compromis- 
ing anybody. I had always heard my parents say 
that it was better to die than to compromise any one 
whomsoever. At last, at three o'clock, my examina- 
tion ended; it had begun at noon. I ardently 
entreated Chaumette to let me rejoin my mother, 
saying truly that I had asked it of my aunt more 
than a thousand times. 'I can do nothing about it,' 
he said to me. 'What, sir, can you not obtain per- 
mission of the Council-General?' 'I have no au- 
thority there. ' He then had me taken back to my 
room by three municipals, advising me to say nothing 
to my aunt, who was also to be obliged to go down 
stairs. . . , On arriving, I threw myself into her 
arms ; but they separated us and bade her descend. 
She came up again at four o'clock. Her examina- 
tion had lasted only one hour, and mine three. 
That was because the deputies saw they could not 
intimidate her, as they had hoped to do a person of 
my age; but the life I had led for more than four 
years, and the example of my parents, had given me 
more strength of soul." 



62 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL&ME 

M. Ferrand has said (in the Eloge historique de 
Madame Elisabeth^ published at Ratisbonne in 1794) : 
"All the infamies of which they were about to 
accuse the Queen with regard to her son, were 
uttered and repeated before the angelic Elisabeth, as 
they had been before her niece. They constrained 
innocence to listen to horrors which outraged nature 
and caused it to shudder. Doubtless they did not 
flatter themselves that they could obtain an avowal 
contrary to truth. But could they even have hoped 
to surprise certain words which it would be possible 
to pervert? Madame Elisabeth's defence was like 
that of Marie Th^rese: true, simple, pure as them- 
selves. After an examination which did not fulfil 
the expectations of the tormentors, but which will 
excite execration throughout all time, the two Prin- 
cesses found themselves once more together, but still 
terrified by the images Avith which their chaste 
imaginations had been sullied. ' O my child ! ' 
exclaimed Madame Elisabeth, extending her hands 
to her niece. A sad silence expressed better than 
any words the sentiments they experienced. For 
the first time, they avoided each other's glance. At 
last their lips opened to let the same words escape, 
and they fell on their knees, as if it were theirs to 
expiate all that they had blushed to hear." 

What had become of Marie Antoinette ? The two 
captives, who had at first received some tidings of 
the unfortunate Queen, were soon to be plunged 
into complete uncertainty. A few tender-hearted 



MADAME ELISABETH 63 

persons had during several weeks found means at 
the risk of their lives to convey news to them from 
the Conciergerie by the aid of Turgy, one of those 
employed in the interior service of the Temple tower. 
One of Louis XVI. 's former personal attendants had 
been courageous enough to make his way inside the 
Conciergerie. Madame Richard, wife of the prison 
porter, had taken him by the hand, and, leading him 
aside, had said: "Trust yourself to me. Who are 
you? What brings you here? Hide nothing from 
me." Encouraged by this friendly invitation. Hue 
made himself known to this woman. She responded 
kindly to all his questions. "You see the motive 
which brings me," he said to her. "To give the 
Queen news of her children, and to inform them and 
Madame Elisabeth of the Queen's condition, is my 
only object. It is meritorious in you to second me." 
Madame Richard promised him and kept her word. 
She apprised Marie Antoinette that FrauQois Hue 
had penetrated even into her prison. " What ! even 
here!" cried the Queen. Success had justified the 
hardihood of the devoted servitor, and for several 
weeks he had the consolaton of procuring news 
of the captive of the Conciergerie for the captives 
of the Temple. But this soon came to an end. 
Turgy, the medium of this mysterious correspon- 
dence, was suspected and sent away from the Tem- 
ple. Madame Elisabeth addressed him this last note : 
" October 11, at 2.15. I am very much afflicted; take 
care of yourself until we are more fortunate and 



64 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

can reward you. Take with you the consolation of 
having well served good and unhappy masters. 
Advise Fidele [Toulan] not to risk himself too much 
for our signals [by the horn]. If by chance you see 
Madame Mallemain, give her news of us, and tell 
her I think of her. Adieu, honest man and faithful 
subject." Two days later, October 13, Hue was 
arrested. Madame Elisabeth and her niece no 
longer heard anything. Everybody shrank from 
adding to the anguish of the Temple the immense 
grief contained in the message: "The Queen has 
ascended the scaffold. " Marie Therese has written 
in her journal: "My aunt and I were ignorant 
of my mother's death; although we had heard her 
condemnation cried out by a street-crier, the hope so 
natural to the unhappy made us think they had 
spared her. We refused to believe in a general 
desertion. Moreover, I do not yet know how things 
occurred outside, nor whether I shall ever leave this 
prison, although they give me hopes of doing so. 
There were moments when, despite our hopes in the 
Powers, we experienced the keenest anxieties on 
account of my mother, seeing the rage of this 
unhappy people against all of us. I remained in 
this cruel doubt for a year and a half; it was then 
only that I learned of the death of my venerated 
mother." 

Let us see now what took place in the Temple 
after the execution of the Queen, still leaving the nar- 
ration to the young captive, whose story is more af- 



MADAME ELISABETH 65 

fecting than all the memoirs : " We learned the death 
of the Duke of Orleans from the street-criers ; it was 
the only piece of news that reached us during the 
winter. However, the searches began anew, and we 
were treated with great severity. My aunt, who had 
had a cautery on her arm ever since the Revolution, 
had great difficulty in obtaining what was necessary 
for dressing it; they refused for a long time to give 
it ; but at last, one day, a municipal officer remon- 
strated against the inhumanity of such a proceeding, 
and sent for ointment. They deprived me also of 
the means to make the decoction of herbs which my 
aunt made me take every morning for my health. 
Not having fish any longer, she asked for eggs or 
other dishes suitable for fast days ; they were refused 
with the remark that to 'equality ' there was no 
difference between days; that there were no weeks 
any longer, but only decades. They brought us a 
new alrqanac, but we did not look at it. 

"Another day when my aunt asked for fast-day 
food, she was told: 'But, citizeness, you don't seem 
to know what has happened; only fools believe in 
all that nowadays.' She did not ask again. The 
searches were continued, especially in November. It 
was ordered that we should be searched three times 
a day. One of them lasted from four until half-past 
eight o'clock in the evening. The four municipals 
who made it were thoroughly drunk. No idea can 
be formed of their remarks, insults, and oaths, dur- 
ing four hours. They took away trifles, such as our 



66 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

hats, cards with kings on them, and some books with 
escutcheons; however, they left our religious books 
after making a thousand impure and stupid speeches. 
. . . They said 'thou ' to us all winter. We de- 
spised all the vexations; but this last degree of 
rudeness always caused my aunt and me to blush." 

In the midst of so many sufferings, the young 
Marie Thdr^se still had one supreme consolation: 
the presence of Madame Elisabeth. Even into the 
gloom of the prison this holy woman shed a nameless 
pure and gentle radiance. The Temple merited its 
name; it was verily a sanctuary, the sanctuary of 
piety and sorrow. The conversations between aunt 
and niece often took place in darkness. The calm- 
ness of night gave a still more persuasive, affecting 
accent to the exhortations of the sublime instruc- 
tress. "The sufferings of this life," said she, "bear 
no proportion to the future glory they enable us to 
merit. Has not Jesus Christ gone before us carry- 
ing His cross? Remember, my child, the words 
your father addressed you on the eve of the day 
when, for the first time, you were to receive the 
blood of the Lamb. He said to you: 'Religion is 
the source of our happiness and our support in 
adversity; do not suppose you will be sheltered 
from it; you know not, my daughter, what Provi- 
dence has designed for you.' " 

No preacher's sermons could have impressed the 
imagination or touched the heart of Marie Th^rdse 
more profoundly than the counsels of Madame Elisa- 



MADAME ELISABETH 67 

beth. The young captive read and re-read the 
prayer-books they had been allowed to keep, and on 
which the conduct of her aunt was a living com- 
mentary. "My aunt," she says in her journal, 
" kept the whole Lent, although deprived of Lenten 
food ; she ate no breakfast ; at dinner she took a bowl 
of coffee with milk (it was her breakfast which she 
kept over), and in the evening she ate nothing but 
bread. She bade me eat whatever they brought me, 
as I had not reached the prescribed age for absti- 
nence ; but nothing could be more edifying for her. 
She had not failed to observe the duties prescribed 
by religion, even when refused fasting diet. At 
the beginning of spring they took away our candle, 
and we went to bed when we could not see any 
longer." With the springtime, arrived the period 
when the orphan of the Temple was to be deprived 
forever of the consolations of Madame Elisabeth, and 
to remain alone in her prison. 



Ill 

THE DEATH OF JIADAME ELISABETH 

FOR several weeks nothing had happened at 
the Temple. The two captives might have 
believed the tormentors had forgotten them. But 
what occurred on the 9th of May? Marie Th^r^se's 
journal tells us: "On that day, just as we were 
going to bed, they drew the bolts and came to knock 
at our door. My aunt said that she would put on 
her dress ; they replied that they could not wait so 
long, and knocked so hard one would think they 
were breaking in the door. She opened it when she 
was dressed. They said to her: 'Citizeness, be so 
good as to go down stairs.' 'And my niece? ' 'She 
will be attended to afterwards.' My aunt embraced 
me, and to calm me said she was going to come up 
again. 'No, citizeness,' said some one, 'you are 
not coming up again ; take your cap and go down. ' 
Then they heaped insults and rude speeches on her ; 
she endured them patiently, put on her cap, em- 
braced me again, and told me to preserve courage 
and firmness, to hope in God always, to profit by 
the good religious principles my parents had given 
me, and not fail to observe the last injunctions of 
68 



THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 69 

my father and mother. She went out. On arriving 
below she was asked for her pockets, which had 
nothing in them; this lasted a long time because the 
municipals drew up a report in order to discharge 
themselves of responsibility for her person. At last, 
after many insults, she departed with an usher of the 
tribunal, got into a cab and arrived at the Concier- 
gerie, where she passed the night." 

The next day. May 10, 1794, Madame Elisabeth 
appeared before the revolutionary tribunal. Dumas, 
the president, asked her the following questions: 
" What is your name ? " — " Elisabeth Marie. " " Your 
age ? " — " Thirty years. " " Where were you born ? " 
— " At Versailles. " " Where do you reside ? " — " In 
Paris." Then the act of accusation was read: — 

" Antoine Quentin Fouquier states that the people 
owe all the evils under whose burden they have 
groaned for centuries to the Capet family. It was 
at the moment when excessive oppression had caused 
the people to break their chains, that this entire 
family joined their forces to plunge them anew into 
a still more cruel bondage than that from which they 
had escaped. The crimes of every sort, the accumu- 
lated villanies of Capet, the Messalina Antoinette, 
the two Capet brothers, and of Elisabeth are too well 
known to make it necessary to retrace the horrible 
picture here. They are written in the annals of the 
Revolution in characters of blood, and the unheard-of 
atrocities exercised by the barbarous emigres or the 
bloody satellites of despots, the murders, conflagra- 



70 THE DUCHESS OF ANG0UL:^ME 

tions, and ravages ; in short, these assassinations 
unknown to the most ferocious monsters which they 
commit upon French territory, are still ordered by 
this detestable family for the sake of delivering 
a great nation to the despotism and fury of a few 
individuals. Elisabeth has shared in all these 
crimes; she has co-operated in all the plots and 
conspiracies formed by her infamous brothers, the 
profligate and shameless Antoinette, and the entire 
horde of conspirators gathered around them. . . . 

" Elisabeth had planned with Capet and Antoinette 
the massacre of the citizens of Paris on the immortal 
10th of August; she kept vigil in the hope of wit- 
nessing this nocturnal carnage, and by her discourse 
encouraged the young persons whom fanatical priests 
had conducted to the palace for that purpose. . . . 
In fine, since the deserved execution of the guilt- 
iest tyrant who ever disgraced human nature, she 
has been seen inciting to the re-establishment of 
tyranny, and lavishing, with Antoinette, the homage 
of royalty and the pretended honors of the throne on 
Capet's son." 

After reading the act of accusation, the president 
interrogated Madame Elisabeth. These are some of 
the questions and answers : — 

"Would you tell us what prevented you from 
going to bed on the night of August 9-10 ? " — "I did 
not go to bed because the constituent bodies had 
come to acquaint my brother with the agitation and 
disorder existing among the inhabitants of Paris." 



THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 71 

"Did you not assist the assassins sent by your 
brother to the Champs Elysees against the brave 
Marseillais by dressing their wounds yourself? " — " I 
never knew that my brother had sent assassins against 
any one whatever ; if I happened to give aid to any 
injured persons, I was led to dress their wounds by 
humanity alone ; I had no need to inquire the cause 
of their injuries in order to busy myself in relieving 
them; I made no merit of doing so, and I do not 
imagine that any one can impute it to me as a 
crime." 

President Dumas responded: "Will the accused 
Elisabeth, whose plan of defence is to deny all she 
is accused of, have the honesty to admit that she has 
cherished in young Capet the hope of succeeding to 
his father's throne, and has thus incited to royalty?" 
— "I talked familiarly with that unfortunate child, 
who was dear to me on more than one account, and 
naturally I administered the consolations which 
seemed to me calculated to compensate him for the 
loss of those who had given him life." 

Chauveau-Lagarde had the courage to defend the 
accused afterwards. He said that her replies, far 
from condemning her, ought to procure honor for her 
in the sight of all, since they proved nothing but 
the goodness of her heart and the heroism of her 
friendship. The intrepid advocate ended his speech 
by saying that instead of a defence he had nothing 
to offer for Madame Elisabeth but his apology ; but 
that, finding it impossible to find one worthy of her, 



72 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

lie had but one observation left to make, namely, 
that the Princess who had been the most perfect 
model of all virtues at the court of France, could 
not be the enemy of the French. 

Then President Dumas furiously apostrophized 
Chauveau-Lagarde, reproaching him with audacity 
in daring to speak of the " pretended virtues of the 
accused, and thus corrupting public morals." It 
was easy to see that Madame Elisabeth, who until 
then had remained tranquil, and as it were, insensi- 
ble to her own danger, was moved by those to which 
her defender had just exposed himself. 

Afterwards, the president put the following ques- 
tions to the jurors : " Is it certain that there existed 
plots and conspiracies formed by Capet, his wife 
and family, his agents and accomplices, in conse- 
quence of which there have been provocations to for- 
eign war on the part of allied tyrants, and to civil 
war in the interior, that aid in the shape of men and 
money has been furnished to the enemy, troops have 
been assembled, arrangements been made, and chiefs 
appointed to assassinate the people, annihilate lib- 
erty, and re-establish despotism? Is it established 
that Elisabeth is convicted of all this?" The jurors 
having responded affirmatively, the holy Princess was 
condemned to death. That very day, at four in the 
afternoon, she left the Conciergerie to be taken to 
the scaffold. 

As she was leaving the tribunal, Fouquier-Tin- 
ville said to the president: "It must be admitted, 



THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 73 

however, that she has not uttered a complaint." 
"What has Elisabeth of France to complain of?" 
answered Dumas, with dismal and sarcastic mirth. 
"Haven't we formed a court of aristocrats to-day 
that is worthy of her? Nothing need prevent her 
from thinking herself still in the salons of Versailles 
when she finds herself surrounded by a loyal nobility 
at the foot of the sacred guillotine." 

The court of aristocrats mentioned by the public 
accuser comprised the twenty-three victims con- 
demned to perish on the same scaffold as the Prin- 
cess; among others, the Marchioness of S^nozan, 
aged seventy-six ; the Marchioness of Crussol d' Am- 
boise, aged sixty-four ; Madame de Montmorin, widow 
of the Minister of Foreign Affairs; her son, aged 
twenty; M. de Lomenie, former Minister of War; 
and the Countess Rosset. The twenty-four victims 
were led into the hall of the condemned, to await 
the fatal cart. There Madame Elisabeth exhorted 
her companions in torture " with a presence of mind, 
an elevation, and an unction which fortified them 
all," as her niece has said. Madame de Montmorin 
exclaimed through her sobs : " I am most willing to 
die, but I cannot see my child die." "You love 
your son," said Madame Elisabeth on this, "and you 
are unwilling that he should accompany you ! You 
are going to find the happiness of heaven, and you 
desire him to remain on this earth where there is 
now nothing but torments and afflictions ! " At 
these words the poor mother, filled with the ecstasy 



74 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

of martyrdom, clasped her boy in her arms : " Come ! 
come ! " she cried, " we will ascend the scaffold 
together." 

Madame Elisabeth resumed her pious exhortations. 
"We are not asked to sacrifice our faith, like the 
ancient martyrs," said she; "all that is demanded 
of us is to abandon our miserable life ; let us make 
this poor offering to God with resignation." 

Thus spoke the saintly Princess in the hall of the 
condemned to death — that long, narrow, gloomy 
hall, separated from the clerk's office by a door and 
a glass partition, and furnished only with wooden 
benches placed against the wall. The sight of the 
Conciergerie recalled to her memor}"- all that Marie 
Antoinette had suffered there. As yet no one had 
found courage to tell the sister of Louis XVI. how 
the martjT-queen had perished. Her uncertainty con- 
cerning the fate of the august victim was to last for 
several minutes longer. She was about to be led to 
the Place of the Revolution — the place where, as 
she knew, her brother had been executed, and where 
a remark made by some one in the crowd was soon 
to apprise her that the Queen had also suffered. 

The last summons is heard. The doors of the 
prison open. Madame Elisabeth rides in the same 
cart with Madame de S^nozan and Madame de 
Crussol d'Amboise. When she is passing the Pont 
Neuf, the white handkerchief that covers her head 
falls off. All eyes turn toward her bare head, and 
recognize the calmness and serenity of her features. 



THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 75 

On reaching the Place of the Revolution, — formerly 
Place Louis XV., — she alights first. The twenty- 
three other victims follow her. All are ranged in 
front of the guillotine. All are admirable for their 
courage. The exhortations of the Princess have 
been fruitful. The first name called by the execu- 
tioner is that of Madame de Crussol d'Amboise. 
She bows to Madame Elisabeth, and says: "Ah! 
Madame, if Your Royal Highness would deign to 
embrace me, I should have all that I desire." " Will- 
ingly," replies the Princess, "and with all my 
heart." The other condemned women obtain the 
same honor. As for the men, they kiss respectfully 
the hand of Louis XVI. 's sister. The executions 
begin. Several heads have already fallen when a 
jeering voice from the crowd pressing around the 
guillotine cries : " It is all very fine, this salaaming 
to her; there she is now, like the Austrian woman! " 
Madame Elisabeth understands. Thus she learns 
the fate of her sister-in-law, and says to herself, 
"May we meet again in heaven! " 

The victims ascend the scaffold one after another, 
and receive the baptism of blood with a pious recol- 
lection like that of the faithful approaching the table 
of the Lord. While the knife is severing the heads, 
Madame Elisabeth recites the De Prqfundis. She 
is to be executed last. The tormentors doubtless 
hope that the sight of twenty-three heads falling 
before her own will deprive her of courage and 
dignity to meet her death. They are disappointed 



76 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULtUE 

in their expectation. Dying as she had lived, 
Madame Elisabeth is sublime up to the last hour, 
the last minute of her saintly existence. When the 
twenty-third victim comes to bow before her : " Cour- 
age and faith in the mercy of God! " says the sister 
of Louis XVI. Her turn has come at last. 

A sovereign mounting the steps of her throne 
would be less majestic than the pious Princess 
climbing those of the scaffold, the pedestal of an 
undying glory. As they are fastening her to the 
fatal plank, her fichu falls to the ground and 
allows a silver medal of the Blessed Virgin to 
be seen. The executioner's assistant, instead of 
replacing the fichu on her bosom, attempts to remove 
this pious emblem. " Cover me, sir, in the name of 
your mother!" These are the last words of the 
Princess. Her head falls, but this time the crowd 
does not give way to its habitual fury. The cries 
of " Long live the Republic! " are not heard. Every- 
body feels that the blood of innocence has just been 
shed. 

It was not until several months later that Marie 
Therese learned the fate of her venerated aunt. 
When the news was told her, she would not believe 
it; such a crime seemed incredible, even after all 
the atrocities of the Terror. Then she wrote in her 
journal this profoundly touching page, an affecting 
tribute of eternal gratitude and admiration : " Marie 
Philippine Elisabeth H^lene, sister of King Louis 
XVI., died May 10, 1794, aged thirty years, after 



THE DEATH OF MADAME ELISABETH 77 

having been always a model of virtue. She gave 
herself to God at the age of fifteen, and thought of 
nothing but her salvation. Since 1790, when I was 
better able to appreciate her, I saw nothing in her 
but religion, love of God, horror of sin, gentleness, 
piety, modesty, and a great attachment to her family, 
for whom she sacrificed her life, never having been 
willing to leave the King and Queen. In a word, 
she was a princess worthy of the blood from which 
she sprang. I cannot say enough concerning the 
kind actions she performed towards me, and which 
ended only with her life. She considered and cared 
for me as if I were her daughter; and for my part, I 
honored her as a second mother; I had promised her 
all the love of one. They say that we resemble 
each other very much in countenance. I feel that 
I have somewhat of her character. May I have all 
her virtues, and go to rejoin her and my father and 
mother in the bosom of God, where I doubt not they 
are enjoying the rewards of a death so meritorious 
for them I " 



IV 

SOLITUDE 

WHEN Madame Elisabeth departed, Marie 
Tlidr^se found herself alone in her prison. 
One after another she had lost all her companions in 
captivity, — her father, her brother, her mother, and 
her aunt. Thenceforward began the separate system 
of confinement, isolation, solitude. What did she 
then experience ? She herself shall tell us. 

"I was left in great desolation when I saw myself 
separated from my aunt; I did not know what had 
become of her, and no one would tell me. I spent 
a very wretched night, and yet, although I was very 
anxious about her fate, I was far from believing that 
I was to lose her in a few hours. Sometimes I 
persuaded myself that she was to be sent away from 
France ; but when I remembered how they had taken 
her, all my fears revived. The next day I asked 
the municipal officers what had become of her; they 
said she had gone to take the air; I renewed my 
request to rejoin my mother, since I was separated 
from my aunt, and they replied that they would talk 
about it." Marie Antoinette had been dead for 
seven months, and her unhappy daughter did not yet 
78 



SOLITUDE 79 



know she was an orphan ! Not one, even among the 
most savage Terrorists, had dared to give her the 
fatal news. 

" They came afterwards, " adds the young captive, 
" to bring me the key of the wardrobe containing my 
aunt's linen; I asked to send her some, as she had 
none; they told me it could not be done. Seeing 
that whenever I asked the municipals to take me to 
my mother or to give me news of my aunt, they 
always replied that they would talk about it; and 
remembering that my aunt had told me that if ever 
I was left alone it would be my duty to ask for a 
woman, I did so out of obedience, but with repug- 
nance, feeling sure that I would either be refused, 
or obtain some vile woman. In fact, when I did 
make this request to the municipals, they told me it 
was unnecessary. They redoubled their severity, 
and took away the knives they had given me, saying : 
'Tell us, citizeness, have you many knives?' — 'No, 
gentlemen, only two.' 'And have you none in your 
dressing-case, nor any scissors ? ' — 'No, gentlemen.' 
Another time they took away my tinder-box ; having 
found the stove hot, they said: 'Might one know 
why you made a fire?' — 'To put my feet in hot 
water.' 'What did you light the fire with?' — 
'With the tinder-box. ' ' Who gave it to you ? ' — 'I 
do not know.' 'Precisely; we are going to take it 
away from you. We do it for your good, lest you 
might fall asleep and burn yourself near the fire. 
You have nothing else ? ' — 'No, gentlemen. ' Their 



80 THE DUCHESS OF ANG0UL:^ME 

visits and such scenes as this were frequent; but 
except when I was positively interrogated I never 
spoke, not even to those who brought my food." 

On the day following Madame Elisabeth's death, 
a man to whom the municipal officers showed great 
respect, presented himself in the prison of the young 
Princess. She did not know him. Suspecting that 
she was in the presence of some powerful individual, 
she did not speak a word to him, but merely handed 
him a paper on which these lines were written : " My 
brother is ill ; I have written to the Convention for 
permission to nurse him; the Convention has not 
yet answered me; I reiterate my request." The 
man was Robespierre. After giving him the paper, 
the prisoner went on reading without raising her 
eyes to his face. She thus describes the visit in her 
journal : " One daj^ there came a man — I think it 
was Robespierre ; the municipals showed him great 
respect. His visit was a secret for the people in the 
tower, who either did not know who he was, or were 
unwilling to tell me; he looked at me insolently, 
glanced over my books, and after searching with the 
municipals, he went away." 

After her aunt's departure, Marie Th^rese spent 
nearly fifteen months alone, a prey to sadness and 
the most painful reflections, asking for nothing, and 
mending even her own shoes and stockings. This 
graceful and affecting captive in her sixteenth year 
impresses the imagination and moves the heart. 
One thinks of her at night, in her cruel solitude. 



SOLITUDE 81 



listening to some distant noise which may be a 
signal of deliverance, but is more probably a signal 
of death. She pays close attention. It is a passer-by, 
who, in going through the adjoining streets, hums 
at the risk of his life some royalist refrain, whose 
echo reaches the prisoner. At other times hawkers 
cry their odious pamphlets and shameless journals 
in the darkness, or drunken men chant the Marseil- 
laise or howl the Ca ira. But there is one angelic 
voice whose pious harmonies rise above all these 
human discords. It is that of Madame Elisabeth; 
the ear does not hear it, but the soul does. The 
dead woman still speaks. Defuncta adhuc loquitur. 
And through the silence of solitude and the dark- 
ness, the echo of this mysterious and sublime voice 
from beyond the tomb, penetrates the dismal Temple 
tower and inspires the orphan with the true senti- 
ments of a Christian. Madame Elisabeth continues 
in death the work she began in life, and it is she 
who gives her niece the moral and material energy 
indispensable to endure such tortures. 

In the month of September, 1795, the Duchess of 
Tourzel, being authorized to pay the prisoner a visit, 
asked how it was that a person so sensitive as she 
did not succumb under such a weight of sorrows ; to 
which question the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette answered: "Without religion it would 
have been impossible. Religion was my only re- 
source, and it procured for me the only consolations 
of which my heart could be susceptible. I had 



82 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^IME 

preserved my Aunt Elisabeth's books of devotion, I 
read them, I recalled her counsels to mind, I sought 
never to deviate from them, and to follow them 
exactly. On embracing me for the last time and 
inciting me to courage and resignation, she posi- 
tively enjoined me to ask that a woman might be 
placed with me. Although I infinitely preferred 
solitude to any one they would have given me at the 
time, my respect for my aunt's wishes did not per- 
mit me to hesitate. They refused, and I was very 
glad of it. 

" My aunt, who foresaw only too clearly the mis- 
fortunes in store for me, had accustomed me to wait 
on myself and to need no assistance. She had so 
regulated my life that every hour was occupied; the 
care of my room, prayer, reading, work, — all had 
their own time. She had habituated me to make my 
bed alone, to comb my hair, and dress myself ; more- 
over, she had neglected nothing which could contrib- 
ute to my health. She made me sprinkle water about, 
so as to freshen the air of vcvj room, and had also 
required me to walk very fast for an hour, with a 
watch in my hand, in order to prevent stagnation 
of the humors." 

The young girl followed these prescriptions of 
moral and physical hygiene to the letter. It was 
this that saved her, almost as if by miracle. " For 
myself," she says in her journal, "I asked nothing 
but mere necessaries ; sometimes they were rudely 
refused. But I could at least keep myself clean ; I 



SOLITUDE 



had soap and water. I swept the room every day; 
I had it done by nine o'clock, when they came to 
bring my breakfast. I had no lights; but in the 
long days I suffered less from this privation. They 
would no longer give me books; I had only pious 
ones and some travels which I had read a thousand 
times; I had also some knitting, which bored me 
dreadfully." 

Despite an energy truly wonderful in so young a 
person, the daughter of Louis XVI. came very near 
dying in the Temple, like her brother. " When she 
heard the general alarm beaten," says the Duchess 
of Tourzel in her Memoirs, "she experienced a 
gleam of hope ; for in her sad condition, any change 
seemed for the better, since she had no fear of death. 
One day she thought she had reached the term of her 
troubles, and she beheld death approaching with the 
calmness of innocence and virtue. She was so ill 
that she lost consciousness, and when she awoke as 
from profound slumber, she knew not how long she 
had remained in this state. Notwithstanding- all 
her courage, she owned to us that she was so weary 
of her profound solitude that she said to herself: 'If 
they should end by putting any person with me who 
was not a monster, I feel that I could not avoid 
loving her.' " 

On the day when Robespierre fell — the 9th Ther- 
midor (July 27, 1794) — Marie Thdr^se, alarmed by 
the tumult whose echoes reached the Temple, thought 
herself lost. "I heard them beat the general alarm," 



84 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

she says, " and sound the tocsin ; I was very uneasy. 
The municipals who were at the Temple did not 
budge. When they brought my dinner, I dared not 
ask what was going on." 

Barras, who had been appointed commander-in- 
chief of the armed forces by the Convention at the 
time when, threatened by the riot this Assembly 
seemed about to perish, marched at noon upon the 
H8tel-de-Ville, then occupied by the insurgents ; he 
outlawed them, and arrested Robespierre and his 
accomplices. Hardly had he been overthrown than 
Bar^re — the Anacreon of the guillotine, as he was 
called — inveighed against him in the Convention, 
then in permanent session. "He had the audacity," 
says Barras, in his still unpublished Memoirs, "to 
accuse the tyrant of wishing to re-establish the 
son of Louis XVI. on the throne, and of planning 
on his own behalf to marry Mademoiselle, the 
daughter of that monarch. ..." In consequence 
of BarSre's statement, and in accordance with 
that system of lies intended for the people which 
the most widely diverse governments seem to pass 
from one to another with the same end of decep- 
tion in view, the committee spread a rumor that 
the captives of the Temple, the unhappy children of 
Louis XVI., had escaped. The two committees, the 
majority of whom were still Jacobins, had dissem- 
inated this false report in order to cast a suspicion 
of royalism on the Thermidorian party. 

Barras wished to see with his own eyes how things 



SOLITUDE 85 



really stood. At six in the morning of the 10th 
Thermidor he went to the Temple, accompanied by- 
several members of the committees and deputies 
from the Convention, in full uniform. He wished 
to show himself, at the head of his cortege, at the 
principal military stations of Paris and cause the 
troops to renew their oath to be faithful to the Con- 
vention. He came to a halt at the Temple station, 
where he doubled the guard, commanded the munic- 
ipal officers to remain permanently and exercise the 
strictest vigilance, and then went up into the great 
tower, where he successively saw Louis XVII. and 
his sister. 

This is what Marie Therese wrote in her journal 
concerning this visit: "The 10th Thermidor, at six 
in the morning, I heard a frightful noise at the 
Temple; the guard called to arms, the drum beat, 
and the doors opened and closed. All this racket 
was occasioned by a visit from certain members of 
the National Assembly, who came to assure them- 
selves that all was quiet. I heard the bolts of my 
brother's chamber drawn. I sprang out of bed and 
was dressed when the members of the Convention 
reached my room. Barras was among them; they 
were in full dress, which astonished me, because I 
was not accustomed to see them so, and was always 
fearing ■ something or other. Barras talked to me, 
calling me by my name ; he was surprised to find me 
up, and said several things to which I made no an- 
swer. They departed, and I heard them haranguing 



86 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

the guards under the windows and telling them to be 
faithful to the National Convention. There were 
many shouts of: 'Long live the Republic! Long 
live the Convention! ' The guard was doubled." 

Some hours after the visit of Barras to the Temple, 
Robespierre and his principal accomplices were con- 
ducted to the scaffold, amid cries of joy and curses 
from the people. The next day, 11th Thermidor, 
the committees of Public Safety and General Secu- 
rity ratified the choice which had made Barras guar- 
dian of the children of Louis XVL They decreed 
that " Citizen Laurent, member of the Revolutionary 
Committee of the Temple, should be put provision- 
ally in charge of the tyrant's children." The two 
committees united in enjoining "the most exact 
surveillance." 

Laurent was installed on the day of his appoint- 
ment, 11th Thermidor, toward half-past nine in the 
evening, by several members of the municipality. 
His first care was to visit the prison of Marie 
Thdr^se. "I was in bed," she says, "without any 
light, and not asleep, so anxious was I about what 
was going on; some one knocked on my door to 
show me to Laurent, commissioner of the Conven- 
tion, who had been given charge of my brother and 
me. I rose, and these gentlemen made a thorough 
search, showing Laurent everything, and then going 
away. 

" The next day at ten o'clock, Laurent entered my 
room, and asked me politely whether I needed any- 



SOLITUDE 87 



thing. He came three times a day, always behaved 
witli civility, and did not say 'thou' to me. He never 
searched the bureaus and commodes. I very soon 
asked him for what interested me so keenly, news 
of my parents, of whose death I was ignorant, and 
also to be re-united to my mother. He answered with 
a very sad expression that that was not his affair. 

" The next day some men in scarfs came, to whom 
I put the same questions. They also answered that 
it was not their affair, and that they could not 
understand why I did not want to remain here, 
because it seemed to them that I was very well off. 
'It is frightful,' I said to them, 'to be separated 
from my mother for a year without learning any 
news of her or of my aunt either.' 'You are not 
ill? ' — 'No, sir; but heart sickness is the most cruel 
of all. ' ' I tell you we can do nothing about it ; I 
advise you to be patient, and to hope in the justice 
and goodness of the French people. ' I said nothing 
more." 

Meanwhile a certain change for the better took 
place in the attitude of the guardians of the Prin- 
cess. In speaking of Laurent, she says: "I have 
nothing but praise for his manners during all the 
time he was in service. He often asked if I needed 
anything; he begged me to tell him what I would 
like, and to ring whenever I required something. 
He gave back my tinder-box and candle. 

"At the end of October (1794), at one o'clock in 
the morning, I was asleep when some one knocked 



88 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

at my door; I arose in haste and opened it trem- 
bling with fear. I saw two members of the committee 
with Laurent; they looked at me and went away 
without saying anything. 

" The winter passed quietly enough. I was satis- 
fied with the civility of my guardians ; they wished to 
make my fire and gave me all the wood I wanted, 
which pleased me. They also brought the books I 
asked for; Laurent had already procured me some. 
My greatest grief was that I could obtain no news of 
my mother and my aunt; I dared not ask for any 
concerning my uncles and my great-aunts, but I 
thought of them incessantly." 

Notwithstanding the comparative amelioration in 
the rigors of her captivity, Marie Th^r^se continued 
to see nobody except her guardians at the hours 
when they brought her meals, and from time to time 
the commissioners of the Convention, who came to 
make sure that she was still a prisoner. The Duch- 
ess of Tourzel has written in her Memoirs : " I asked 
Madame one day if she had never been put to incon- 
venience during the time of her profound solitude. 
'My person occupied me so little,' she replied, 'that 
I did not pay it much attention. ' It was then that 
she spoke of the fainting-fit which I mentioned 
above, adding such affecting remarks on the slight 
esteem she had for life that no one could listen to 
her without profound emotion. I cannot recall 
these details unmoved ; but I should reproach m^^self 
if I did not make known the courage and generosity 



SOLITUDE 89 



of this young Princess. Far from complaining of all 
she had had to suffer in that horrible tower which 
reminded her of so many woes, she never voluntarily 
spoke of it, and her memory could never efface from 
her heart the love of a countrj'' she always held so 
dear." Her parents had taught her to forgive inju- 
ries. She was as good a Frenchwoman as she was a 
Christian, and her patriotism alone was equal to her 
religion. 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVH 

WE have just narrated what took place on the 
third floor of the great tower of the Temple 
after Marie Antoinette departed to the Conciergerie. 
Let us now examine what occurred on the second 
floor of the same tower. Dante's infernal regions 
present no more horrible spectacle than that of the 
tortures to which the son of Louis XVI. was sub- 
jected. His dungeon was not an ordinary prison. 
It was a sort of foul and repulsive kennel, a place of 
abomination and desolation, a sepulchre full of 
terrors, wherein the poor little captive united to the 
consciousness of life the agonies of a never-ceasing 
death. The poisonous atmosphere he breathed 
deprived him of all appetite and corrupted the mis- 
erable food they brought him. His chamber was no 
better than a pestilential sewer, infested by rats and 
mice. Great black spiders crawled over his bed at 
night. To rid himself of their hideous contact he 
would rise and sit on his chair, passing the night 
with his elbows resting on the table. At other 
times he would fill his hat with the scraps of meat 
and crusts of bread left from his meals and place 
00 



TEE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 91 

it in the middle of the floor. There the rats and 
mice would gather around it and leave him to get a 
few minutes of repose. 

It is said in the work of Simien-Despr^aux, who 
was informed by Gagni^, chief cook at the Temple, 
that "the young Prince led an apathetic existence 
amid repulsive uncleanliness. . . . His arms, thighs, 
and legs grew singularly long at the expense of his 
breast and body; three tumors, to which no one con- 
descended to pay the least attention, developed them- 
selves on his knee, his wrist, and his arm. An acrid 
and violent humor gathered in them and corroded 
the flesh; a sort of eruption ate into his neck, and 
his beautiful chestnut hair seemed to take root, if 
one may say so, in the cavities formed by the puru- 
lent humor. . . . His whole neck, from its lower 
extremity up to the roots of the hair was covered 
with a persistent eruption, made more painful still 
because the wretched child, carrying his fingers 
thither by a natural impulse, scratched it inces- 
santly, and made the wounds bleed with his nails, 
which had grown very long." 

People supposed that M. de Beauchesne had ex- 
hausted the subject of Louis XVII. 's martyrdom in 
his eloquent and affecting book. They were mis- 
taken. The work published by M. Chantelauze 
under the title: Louis XVII., his childhood, im- 
prisonment, and death in the Temple; after unpub- 
lished documents of the National Archives, has given 
many new details of this captivity, the most touching 



92 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULtUE 

and doleful made known to us by history. The cob- 
bler Simon had assuredly been a cruel persecutor to 
the son of Louis XVI., but the unhappy child had 
learned to long for this tormentor. Solitary confine- 
ment was still more terrible than the presence of such 
a monster. Simon's wife may have been a vixen, but 
still she sometimes took pity on the little prisoner, 
and even though she ill-used him, she washed and 
combed him, she made his bed and swept his room. 
But on January 19, 1794, the odious guardian, 
obliged to choose between his functions at the 
Temple and his position as member of the Council- 
General, abandoned the first to preserve the second. 
It was then decided that the cobbler should have no 
successor. The Simon household disappeared, and 
after January 20, 1794, the royal child underwent 
the severest hardships of solitary confinement. It 
was considered that the whole of the second floor of 
the great tower would be much too large a prison for 
him. His quarters were restricted, therefore, to 
a single room, that at the back, which had been 
formerly occupied by Clery. The door separating 
this room from the antechamber was cut in two, 
breast high, furnished with bars and gratings and 
iron plates, and secured with nails and screws. On 
the lower part of the door, at the same height, was 
fastened a table with two leaves, above which was a 
wicket of iron cross-bars, closed with a solid pad- 
lock. Through this wicket the child's coarse meals 
were passed, watery soups in which a few lentils 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 93 

floated, scraps of dry boiled beef, black bread, and 
a jug of water, but never any wine. On the edge 
of this table the little prisoner had to place the 
earthen vessel which he had used. 

Never any fire on the hearth, never any light at 
night. Darkness, solitude, and terror. Behold the 
descendant of so many kings, the heir of Saint 
Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV., trembling in 
every limb, and more to be pitied than the sorriest 
of beggars. Behold in him the type of grief, a liv- 
ing corpse, laden with the proof of how far human 
misery may extend. His legs, on account of the 
swelling of his knees, are squeezed as in a vice by 
pantaloons too narrow, which he is compelled to 
wear both day and night, as he does his ragged gray 
jacket. Poor child! His dull, his frightful soli- 
tude is interrupted only by the nightly rounds of the 
commissioners who come to make personally sure of 
his presence in the dungeon. "Are you asleep, 
Capet? Get up! Come here!" And the little 
prisoner starting out of sleep, almost dead with fear, 
jumps out of the foot of his bed, and runs with bare 
feet across the icy floor. " Here I am, citizen ; what 
do you want of me ? " — " To see you ; now go back 
to bed, little whelp." These were the only times 
when he saw human faces. Treated as if he had the 
plague or were a leper, he did not even see the hand 
of the person who thrust his meagre pittance through 
the hole cut in the door. He never heard any sound 
but the drawing of the bolts that shut him in. His 



94 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

moral sufferings were not less atrocious than his 
physical ones. 

In spite of all that had been done to stultify and 
debase him, he still retained sufficient intelligence 
to compare the present with the past, to remember 
all that he had lost and to be conscious of the depths 
of the abyss into which he had been precipitated. 
Listen to the narrative of the victim's sister: "I 
knew they had had the cruelty to leave my poor 
brother alone. It was an unheard-of barbarity, which 
is surely unexampled, to abandon, in this way, an un- 
fortunate child of eight years, who was already ill, 
and keep him shut up in his chamber, under lock 
and bar, with nothing to aid him except a wretched 
bell which he never rang because he was so afraid of 
the people he might have summoned, and preferred 
to do without rather than ask his persecutors for the 
least thing. He was in a bed which had not been 
shaken up in six months, and which he was no 
longer strong enough to make; fleas and other 
insects covered it, and his linen and person were 
full of them. His stockings and shirt had not been 
changed for more than a year. His window, closed 
with chains and bars, was never opened, and no one 
could stay in his chamber on account of the foul 
odor. It is true that my brother neglected himself ; 
he might have taken a little more care of his person, 
and at least washed himself, since they gave him a 
jug of water ; but this unhappy child was dying with 
fear; he never asked for anything, so much had 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 95 

Simon and his other keepers made him tremble. He 
did nothing all day long. They never gave him any 
light. This condition was most injurious to his 
mind as well as his body. It is not surprising that 
he fell into a frightful consumption. That he had a 
strong constitution is proved by the time his health 
remained good, and his long struggle against so 
many cruelties." 

While Madame Elisabeth was still in the tower, 
there had been a time when Marie Th^r^se thought 
her brother had left the prison. "On January 19," 
she says in her journal, " we heard a great noise in 
my brother's apartments, which made us conjecture 
that he was going to leave the Temple, and we were 
convinced of it when, by looking through the key- 
hole, we saw some parcels taken away. On the fol- 
lowing days we heard the door open and people 
walking in the chamber, and we remained persuaded 
that he had gone. We supposed that some distin- 
guished person must have been put down stairs ; but 
I afterwards knew that it was Simon who departed. 
Being forced to choose between a place as municipal 
officer and that of guardian to my brother, he had 
preferred the first." 

The noise which had occasioned the error of the 
two captives was made by the men who were at 
work for two days on Louis XVII. 's narrow dun- 
geon. They finished it January 21, 1794, the first 
anniversary of Louis XVI. 's death. 

From time to time Marie Thdrdse obtained tidings 



96 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

of her brother through certain compassionate souls, 
the turnkey Baron, and Caron the kitchen servant. 
But they did not tell her all. It would have caused 
her too much suffering. Why did they not allow 
her to go down to the second floor, to open the 
door of the room where the poor child was groaning, 
and succor, console, care for, and save him? She 
would have been his good angel, she would have 
rescued him from misery and death. All that was 
necessary to accomplish this work of deliverance and 
salvation was for her to descend a few steps, and she 
was forbidden to do so! What a torture for this 
sublime young girl who would so willingly have 
given her life to save that of her brother ! 

When Barras visited the Temple, July 27 (10 
Thermidor II.), he wished to see the little Prince. 
The iron door of the dungeon was unfastened, and 
it turned upon its rusty hinges for the first time in 
more than six months. The frightened child ex- 
claimed: "I have no fault to find with my keepers." 
Barras, stupefied by the horrible sight he witnessed, 
responded : " For my part, I shall make lively com- 
plaints about the filthy condition of this chamber." 
He afterwards questioned the young Prince very 
gently about the state of his health. 

The little prisoner complained of very severe pains 
in his knees and of not being able to bend them. 
Barras saw for himself that a tumor had produced 
great damage there, and that the condition of the 
child, who had lost appetite and could not sleep, was 



THE LAST DATS OF LOUIS XVII 97 

hopeless. Crushed and broken down by suffering, 
his body bent double like that of an old man, his 
eyes dull and his face pallid, the son of kings looked 
like a spectre. Where now were the days when, 
under the trees of Versailles, the Tuileries, or Saint 
Cloud, he seemed so graceful with his soft, deep 
eyes, his curling hair, his transparent complexion, 
brilliant and glowing as if lighted by an inward 
flame? What had become of that radiant, angelic 
child, beautiful as his mother or as the day ? Job's 
dunghill was less lamentable than the sewer where 
groaned this little innocent. 

In spite of the reaction that was beginning, the 
men of Thermidor were still savages. As a rumor 
was spreading to the effect that a change for the 
better was to be made in the condition of the chil- 
dren of Louis XVI., the Committee of General 
Security had just declared in presence of the Con- 
vention that it had issued no instructions that could 
be so construed. "The Committee," said they, 
"have absolutely no thought of ameliorating the 
captivity of Capet's children. The Committee and 
the Convention know how the heads of kings are 
made to fall ; but they do not know how their chil- 
dren are to be brought up." 

In spite of the injunctions of Barras, Laurent, 
the new guardian of Louis XVII., either through 
negligence or fear of compromising himself, allowed 
a month and four days to elapse before cleaning the 
wretched child's room. September 1, 1794, with 



98 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

the assistance of several persons, and especially of 
Gagni^, the chief cook, he unclosed the iron door 
and broke the round wicket. The little prisoner 
trembled like a leaf on hearing the sound of the 
hammers and the grinding of the bolts. They found 
him extended on his miserable pallet, pale, livid, 
with lack-lustre eyes, bent back, arms and legs far 
too long for his age, his wrists and ankles swollen 
by tumors, and the nails of his hands and feet as 
long as those of a wild beast. On a little table lay 
his dinner which he had not touched. Gagni^ said to 
him: "Monsieur Charles" — they no longer called 
him Capet — "why don't you eat? You ought to 
eat." "No, my friend," replied the child; "no, I 
want to die." Caron, the cook's assistant, cut his 
hair which had stuck fast in his sores. His nails, 
which were as hard as horn, were likewise trimmed. 
They took off his vermin-covered clothing and 
installed him in the chamber formerly occupied by 
his father until his own should be thoroughly 
cleansed. Some of the window-blinds were removed, 
so that more light could enter, and the sashes were 
opened to admit air. Clean linen was substituted 
for his half-rotten sheets. One of the two beds in 
his sister's apartment was brought down stairs and 
the little prisoner laid upon it. A surgeon came 
from time to time to wash and dress his sores. 
When his room had been cleaned the child was put 
back there, but they left him all alone. 

Marie Th^rdse still had no communication with 



THE LAST BATS OF LOUIS XVII 99 

her brother. She was destined never to see him 
again. It was formally forbidden that the brother 
and sister should take their walk at the same time. 
Not only were they never to be allowed to meet, but 
their guardians were bidden to conceal from them 
that they were detained in the same place. Louis 
XVII. never heard any tidings of his sister, and if 
Marie Th^rese occasionally obtained a few details 
concerning him, it was only through some departure 
from the strictest orders. No change in their food 
had yet been permitted. The decree of Septem- 
ber 23, 1793, which condemned them to the same 
wretched fare as was given to thieves and assassins, 
had been rigorously observed. Even the half-bottle 
of wine to which Louis XVII. was entitled by this 
decree, and which was given to his sister, was with- 
held from him. And during all this time, the mu- 
nicipal officers and the jailers were feasting from 
morning to night at the expense of the State. 

Weakened and ricketty as he was, no longer more 
than a sort of phantom, the unhappy child was still, 
in the eyes of all Europe and of many Frenchmen, 
His Most Christian Majesty, the King of France and 
Navarre. Even in Paris itself the poor little pris- 
oner had numerous partisans. This puny child 
alarmed the terrible Convention. At no price would 
they grant him his liberty. In the session of January 
22, 1795, Cambac^r^s, in the name of the two Com- 
mittees, read a report which concluded thus: "An 
enemy is much less dangerous when he is in your 



100 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

power than when he has passed into the hands of 
those who sustain his cause or have embraced his 
party. Let us suppose that Capet's heir should find 
himself in the midst of our enemies ; you would soon 
find him present at every point where our legions 
had enemies to combat. Even should he cease to 
exist, he would be found again everjrwhere, and this 
chimera would long serve to nourish the guilty 
hopes of Frenchmen who are traitors to their coun- 
try. . . . There is little danger in holding Capet's 
family in captivity; there is much in expelling 
them. The expulsion of tyrants has almost always 
prepared the way for their return, and if Rome had 
detained the Tarquins, she would not have had to 
combat them." 

Meanwhile the Vend^ans were fighting in the 
name of Louis XVII. , and in Paris the secret police 
agents declared there was a rising public sentiment 
in favor of the young Prince. His name was spoken 
in market-places and suburbs. Everybody felt inter- 
ested in what was done at the Temple. Sometimes 
it was said the little prisoner had been abducted, 
and sometimes that he was soon to be proclaimed 
king. These verses were posted up in the National 
Garden: — 

" Guilty nation, gone astray, 
And to cruel plagues a prey, 
Wouldst thou from thy bosom chase 
Famine, dearth, and all their race ? 
Put the baker's journeyman 
In his father's shop again." 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 101 

A certain change for the better had been effected 
in the treatment of the son of Louis XVI. Gomin, 
appointed Laurent's assistant, November 8, 1794, 
and Lasne, who replaced Laurent, April 1, 1795, 
showed him a respect to which he had long been 
unaccustomed. His cruel solitude was interrupted 
now and again. They brought him cards and 
chatted with him. They took him up to the plat- 
form of the tower to breathe a little fresh air. But 
all this came too late. Crushed by anguish, the 
child was irrevocably doomed. The attentions of 
Gomin and Lasne could not possibly avail. The 
Duchess of Tourzel writes in her Memoirs : " Gomin 
told me that when the young Prince was placed in 
their hands his neglected condition not only made 
him painful to behold, but occasioned most disa- 
greeable troubles to himself. He had fallen into a 
state of continual absorption, spoke little, and was 
unwilling either to walk or to occupy himself with 
anything whatever. And yet he had some surpris- 
ing flashes of genius. He liked to quit his room, 
and was pleased when they took him into the coun- 
cil-chamber and seated him near the window. Poor 
Gomin, who in spite of his good-will was unskilled 
in the care of the sick, did not at first perceive that 
this absorption proceeded from a malady by which 
the poor little Prince had been attacked, and was 
the result of ill treatment and the lack of air and 
exercise, even more necessary to this child than to 
another; for in speaking of the beauty of face which 



102 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

outlasted his life, he praises the two rosy apples on 
his cheeks, which but too plainly announced the 
internal fever wasting him. But he was not slow 
to perceive that all the child's joints were swollen, 
and he asked more than once to have a doctor exam- 
ine him. No attention was paid to his entreaties, 
and Desault, chief surgeon at the H6tel-Dieu, was 
not sent there until his aid had become entirely 
useless." 

On May 6, 1795, Doctor Desault, one of the most 
celebrated physicians of the day, arrived at the 
Temple, and lavished all his cares on the innocent 
victim. The young Prince showed his gratitude to 
the good doctor by breaking the silence he observed 
with his jailers and the municipal commissioners. 
When these persons announced that the visit must 
end, the child, unwilling to ask them to prolong it, 
held fast to the tail of Desault's coat. But the 
doctor's death was to precede that of the young 
invalid. "Desault," says the Duchess of Tourzel, 
" experienced the keenest emotion on beholding the 
deplorable state to which the august and unfortunate 
child had been reduced. He had the greatest desire 
for his recovery, and employed all his skill to that 
effect. His whole mind was bent on it; he slept 
neither day nor night, and spent all his time in seek- 
ing some means by which it might be accomplished. 
His imagination became so overheated that his health 
suffered in consequence. He experienced great 
physical disturbance which his fear of being super- 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 103 

seded by some one whose sentiments would be dif- 
ferent, made him undertake to quell; his humors 
inflamed, and he was attacked by a dysentery which 
carried him to the grave in a few days." Desault 
fell seriously ill in the night of May 29-30, and 
died on June 1. Strange rumors got into circula- 
tion concerning this sudden death. Some claimed 
that the doctor had been poisoned because he refused 
to poison the little Prince. Others tried to spread 
the absurd report that having obeyed a secret order 
to administer slow poison to the young invalid, he 
had been poisoned in his turn so as to efface the 
traces of his crime. 

Louis XVII. finally reached the end of his mis- 
eries. "My brother's malady grew worse daily," 
writes Marie Th^rese; "even his mind felt the 
effects of the severity used towards him, and insen- 
sibly weakened. The Committee of General Secu- 
rity sent Doctor Desault to attend him ; he undertook 
his cure, although he recognized that the malady 
was very dangerous. Desault died, and was suc- 
ceeded by Dumaugin and Surgeon Pelletan. They 
entertained no hopes of his recovery. He was given 
medicines which he swallowed with difficulty. 
Happily, his malady did not cause him much suffer- 
ing ; it was a case of prostration and decline, rather 
than of acute pains." Alas! this final sentence 
testifies to an illusion on the part of the young Prin- 
cess. The wretched child experienced the most 
cruel tortures to the very end of his life. "How 



104 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

unhappy I am to see you suffer like that!" said 
Gomin to him. "Console yourself," replied the 
little martyr; "I shall not suffer always." A few- 
minutes before yielding up his soul, he turned his 
head toward his two guardians, and feebly mur- 
mured his last words : " Put me in a place where I 
shall not suffer so ! " 

Marie Th^rese ends her journal in the Temple by 
mentioning this death in the following words : " Thus 
died, June 9, 1795, at three o'clock in the afternoon, 
Louis XVII., aged ten years and two months. The 
commissioners wept bitterly, so much had he made 
himself beloved by them for his amiable qualities. 
He had possessed much intelligence, but the prison 
and the horrors he had been subjected to had greatly 
altered it; even if he had lived, it is to be feared 
that his mind would have been affected. 

" I do not believe that he was poisoned, as people 
said and continue to say; that is false according to 
the testimony of the physicians who opened the 
body, and found not the least trace of poison. The 
drugs he had been using in his last illness were 
analyzed and found innocuous. The only poison 
which shortened his life was uncleanliness joined to 
horrible treatment, cruelty, and the unexampled 
severity exercised towards him. 

" Such has been the life and death of my virtuous 
relatives during their sojourn in the Temple and 
other prisons. 

" Done at the Temple tower." 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 105 

The death of the poor little Prince was concealed 
from Marie Th^rese for a considerable time. The 
child was lying inanimate within a few steps of her, 
in the very room beneath her own, and she did not 
know it; she was as ignorant of this death as she 
still remained of those of Marie Antoinette and 
Madame Elisabeth. When, several weeks later, she 
learned that she had lost her mother, her aunt, and 
her brother, she remained inconsolable because she 
had not been able to nurse the innocent victim who 
had suffered so much. 

During all the nights preceding his death the poor 
child had been left alone. His guardians were 
permitted to see him only in the daytime. He 
breathed his last sigh in Lasne's arms at three in the 
afternoon. If he had expired in the night, he would 
have passed away in absolute solitude. The bar- 
barous regulation which forbade his being watched 
at night was not repealed until he had been dead 
some hours. His body was placed on a stretcher, 
carried to the cemetery of Saint Marguerite, and 
thrown into the common grave. Thus ended the 
descendant and heir of Louis XIV. 

Even this did not fill the measure of calamities 
and painful memories for the daughter of Louis 
XVI. She was still to be tormented all her life by 
importunate claimants who called themselves Louis 
XVIL, and pursued her with incessant demands. 
She declared one day that she had received letters from 
twenty-eight different persons, each of whom said he 



106 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUlAmE 

was her brother. The history of these pretenders 
does not enter into the design of this study. M. 
Chantelauze, in his conscientious and remarkable 
work, and M. Ernest Bertin, in some excellent 
articles published in the Debats of January 17, 27, 
and 31, 1885, have annihilated the fables which can 
no longer play on public credulity. It was Regnault 
Warin, a writer completely forgotten now, who 
settled the vocation of most of the pretended Louis 
XVII.s by a romance called Le Cimetiire de la Made- 
leine^ which he brought out in 1798. In it he pre- 
tends that two of Chare tte's emissaries had brought 
a child stupefied by opium into the Temple, conceal- 
ing him inside a hobby-horse presented to the little 
Prince, and that having substituted this child for 
Louis XVII., the latter was carried away in the 
packing-basket that had contained the wooden horse. 
According to the same romance, Louis XVII., after 
having been first called for and then rejected by the 
Vend^an army, embarked for America, was captured 
at sea, brought back to France, and thrown into 
prison, where he died. " The romancer killed Louis 
XVII.," says M. Ernest Bertin; "the claimants did 
not carry their plagiarism so far. The wooden horse 
was what chiefly impressed their imaginations, and 
all of them got into it to make their escape from the 
Temple." 

The most famous of these pretenders was Naun- 
dorff, who died in Holland, August 10, 1845. In 
August, 1850, his widow and orphans summoned the 



THE LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XVII 107 

Duchess of Angouleme and the children of the Duke 
of Berry before the Seine tribunal to claim their 
descent from Louis XVI. They lost their cause in 
1851, appealed it in 1874, and lost it again. Those 
interested in this strange trial may read the details 
of it in the G-azette des Trihunaux. 

The work of M. Chantelauze confirms by definite 
facts and probable arguments the conclusions reached 
by French magistrates. The historian has made 
special use of the testimonies collected by Count 
Angles, prefect of police, during an inquest ordered 
by Louis XVIII. at the beginning of the second 
Restoration, whose special aim was to seek out, 
interrogate, and recompense all persons who had 
shown any humanity in their dealings with the pris- 
oners of the Temple. M. Chantelauze discovered 
the reports of these interrogatories in the pigeon- 
holes of the National Archives, and they furnished 
him the means whereby to destroy the legends of the 
false Louis XVII. The testimony of Simon's widow 
and the dumbness of the child who died in the 
Temple, had been relied on to prove it possible that 
the son of Louis XVI. might have escaped. Simon's 
widow had alleged, in 1817, that Doctor Desault, on 
seeing the corpse of the pretended Louis XVIL, 
had said he did not recognize the body of the young 
Prince. Now, this woman had either forgotten or 
did not know that Desault died June 1, 1795, eight 
days before Louis XVIL The story of the dumb 
child was no better founded. Numerous persons. 



108 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

among them Gomin and Lasne the keepers, and 
Commissioners Bellanger and Dumont, declared they 
had heard Louis XVII. speak during his last days. 
Two of the pretended sons of Louis XVI., Riche- 
mont and Naundorff, asserted that they had been 
rescued by the Count of Frotte. Richemont said 
his rescue was effected in June, 1794. Now, in a 
letter addressed to a Mrs. Atkym, in March, 1795, 
M. de Frottd speaks regretfully of the impossibility 
of such a deliverance. Naundorff affirmed that he 
had been saluted as king in the midst of Charette's 
soldiers. Now, in 1796, Chare tte in an official proc- 
lamation accused the republicans of having caused 
Louis XVII. to perish in prison. 

Yes, the true Louis XVII., as we believe, is the 
unhappy child who died in the Temple, June 9, 
1795. But is not the very fact of the doubts that 
have been entertained about his death and the 
mystery that surrounds his remains in the common 
grave a striking one ? How could the son of Bour- 
bons and of Hapsburgs, the heir of Saint Louis, 
Henri IV., and Louis XIV., the child whose cradle 
had been encircled by so many adulators, the Dau- 
phin of ideal beauty and rare intelligence, who was 
never shown to the crowd without exciting general 
admiration and enthusiasm, disappear thus into si- 
lence and profound darkness! Who are they who 
identify the descendant of so many kings ? Are they 
high and mighty lords, or personages entrusted with 
great court appointments ? No ; they are poor peo- 



THE LAST DATS OF LOUIS XVII 109 

pie, obscure wardens, men of the lower classes. 
Compare the death of Louis XVII. with his birth. 
How many things had changed in ten years! what 
more striking example than this of worldly vicissi- 
tudes I 



VI 

THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 

THE news of Louis XVII. 's death caused a pro- 
found impression. Worn out by its own fury, 
even the Convention felt its anger lessen and its 
hatred weaken. June 18, 1795, a deputation from 
the city of Orleans came to its bar to demand that 
the daughter of Louis XVI. should be set at liberty, 
in a petition which contained these words : " Citizen 
representatives, while you have broken the chains of 
so many victims of a suspicious and cruel policy, a 
young unfortunate condemned to weep, deprived of 
all consolation, all support, reduced to lament for 
all she held most dear, the daughter of Louis XVI., 
still languishes in the depths of a horrible prison. 
So young and yet an orphan, so young and yet over- 
whelmed by so much bitterness and so many griefs, 
how painfully she has expiated the misfortune of her 
august birth! Alas! who would not take pity on so 
many woes, so much affliction, on such innocence 
and youth?" 

The petition terminated thus : " Come, let us all 
surround this enclosure; form a pious cortege, ye 
Frenchmen susceptible to pity, and ye who have 
110 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 111 

received benefits from this unhappy family; let us 
mingle our tears, lift our supplicating hands and 
demand liberty for this young innocent, and our 
voices will be heard; you will surely grant it, 
citizen representatives, and Europe will applaud 
that resolution, and this day will be for us, and for 
all France, a day of joy and gladness." 

A few weeks earlier the authors of such a petition 
would have been condemned to death, and now they 
were allowed to express their wishes at the bar of 
the Convention. An undeniable reaction in people's 
minds had set in. From this period the severity of 
Marie Th^r^se's captivity was notably relaxed. We 
find the details of these ameliorations in Francois 
Hue's book: Les Bernieres AnnSes de Louis XVI. ; 
in the Duchess of Tourzel's Memoirs; and in two 
masterly works, M. de Beauchesne's Louis XVILy 
and the Vie de Marie Therise de France by M. 
Nettement. 

The solitude of the Temple orphan came to an 
end. A decree of the Committee of Public Safety, 
dated June 13, 1795, decided " that a woman should 
be placed with the daughter of Louis Capet to serve 
as her companion," and the Committee, making its 
choice between " three women commendable for their 
moral and republican virtues," selected "Citizeness 
Madeleine Elisabeth Ren^e Hilaire La Rochette, wife 
of Citizen Bocquet de Chantereine, living in Paris 
at No. 24 rue des Rosiers, section of the Rights of 
Man." This woman was about thirty years of age. 



112 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

In the references with which she was furnished, it 
is said : " Her manners are gentle and good, and her 
appearance modest. Although she has lived a long 
time in the country, she is not out of place in the 
city. Her associates, without being very brilliant, 
have always been very select. She speaks French 
well, and writes it easily and correctly. She knows 
Italian also, and a little English. The study of 
languages, history, geography, music, and drawing, 
and the useful and amusing labors proper to her sex 
have been the occupation of her life. Her commune, 
which she never left until within a few months, is 
that of Gouilly, near Meaux. She was notable there 
for her popularity, and her patriotism has never been 
suspected." 

Marie Thdrese heartily welcomed Madame de 
Chantereine. At last she met a woman who would 
tell her the truth concerning those she held so dear. 
The following dialogue took place between the 
young Princess and her new companion : " Where is 
my mother?" — "Madame has no longer a mother." 
"And my brother?" — "And no brother." "And 
my aunt?" — "And no aunt." "What! Elisabeth 
too? But of what could they accuse her? " 

July 28, 1795, Madame de Chantereine wrote to 
the Committee of Public Safety: "Citizen repre- 
sentatives, I have deferred writing you until now, 
in order to gain time and means to give you correct 
ideas of my conduct toward the daughter of Louis 
Capet, with whom the Committee has placed me. 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 113 

From the first moments of my arrival I flattered 
myself that my attentions would be successful; 
to-day I dare assert that they have surpassed my 
hopes; I owe this to the excellent sentiments of 
my companion. I can but praise her, although I aid 
her but little. Her estimable virtues are even pre- 
cocious. Her amiable qualities and her talents need 
only to be developed and exercised. She unites 
firmness and energy of soul to a touching sensibility 
of heart." 

The amelioration in the young prisoner's condition 
coincided with Madame de Chantereine's arrival at 
the Temple. A decree of June 20, 1795, permitted 
some clothes to be given to the daughter of Louis 
XVI. At last she could discard her puce-colored 
silk frock which was all in tatters, and which she 
had constantly been mending for more than a year. 
"Her dress was now very suitable," says Gomin the 
keeper. " In the morning, while in her chamber, she 
wore a white dimity gown; in the daytime, one of 
nankeen; on Sundays she wore cambric, and on all 
solemn holidays she put on a green silk robe. Her 
beautiful hair, so abundant that the fashionable 
women of the period declared she wore a wig, hung 
down as of old in a pleasing negligence, confined 
sometimes by a ribbon and sometimes by a fichu 
fastened at her forehead." 

The young Princess was provided with paper, 
pencils, India ink, brushes, Velly's History of 
France, Fontenelle's The Worlds., the works of 



114 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULl&ME 

Racine and Boileau, and the letters of Madame de 
S^vign^ and Madame de Maintenon. Her keepers 
were permitted to let her go down into the Temple 
garden. A little spaniel which Laurent had given 
her followed her. The young captive could then 
be seen from the upper windows of the neighboring 
houses. 

Quite close to the tower and the garden there was 
a large oval-shaped house, known as the Rotunda, 
which was within the Temple precincts. The loyal 
Francois Hue made haste to hire a room in it, so as 
to be able to look at the Princess when she walked 
in the garden. He says : " I could see Madame from 
my windows, and I could be seen there ; she could 
even hear a song sung in my room which announced 
that her prison doors were soon to open : — 

*' * Be calm, unhappy one, 
These doors will open soon ; 
Soon from thy chains set free, 
'Neath radiant skies thou'lt be. 
Yet when from this abode 
Of grief thou tak'st thy road. 
Remember that e'en there, 
True hearts made thee their care.' 

" The author of this ballad was M. Lepitre, a 
municipal officer. I also brought Mademoiselle de 
Bravannes there so that her music might afford some 
diversion to this angel of sweetness and virtue. 
Besides a composition of her own called the Com- 
plaint of the Young Prisoner, of which both words 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 115 

and music were produced for the occasion, she sang 
various other pieces. People sang also in the win- 
dows of the houses on the rue de la Corderie, which 
ran along the Temple enclosure on the tower side. 
In spite of their sympathy for the Princess, the two 
keepers, Gomin and Lasne, felt it their duty to ap- 
prise the Committee of Public Safety of this har- 
monious conspiracy. They wrote as follows, August 
11, 1795: "Citizen representatives, we have noticed 
to-day that a ballad has been sung from the win- 
dows in the rue de la Corderie, which look into the 
garden. As it seemed to us that this romance was 
sung when the young prisoner was seen, we walked 
in a different direction. Health and fraternity." 

August 15, 1795, the name-day of Marie Thdrese, 
the singing began again at the window of Fran9ois 
Hue's room in the Rotunda. The Princess was 
pleased with this attention, and walked longer than 
usual in the garden. Two days later, Gomin was 
summoned before the Committee of Public Security. 
" So they are giving concerts," some one said to him. 
"Citizens," he replied, "it is an actress who is 
rehearsing her parts." The matter was dropped for 
the time being. But the government indirectly 
warned FrauQois Hue that the homage paid to mis- 
fortune would be respected only if things went no 
farther. Thereupon the singing ceased, and did not 
begin again until several weeks later. On August 
25, in honor of the feast of Saint Louis, Marie 
Th^r^se hoped to hear again the song which had 



116 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

moved her so much on Assumption Day. In this 
expectation she went down to the garden, but she 
heard no music, and was saddened and made uneasy 
by the silence. 

September 3, 1795, the third anniversary of the 
massacres, those horrible preludes to still greater 
crimes, the young captive was visited at the Temple 
by two women for whom she entertained great affec- 
tion, but the sight of whom recalled most painful 
memories. These were the Marchioness of Tourzel, 
who had been governess to the royal children, and 
was given the rank of Duchess by Louis XVIII., in 
1816, and her daughter Pauline, who had been the 
childish companion of the Princess. 

The Marchioness of Tourzel, the daughter of the 
Duke of Croy-Havr^, and a Montmorency-Luxem- 
bourg, was at this period forty-six years old. She 
was a model of piety, devotion, and courage. On 
the day after the taking of the Bastille, she suc- 
ceeded, as governess to the children of France, the 
Duchess of Polignac, who then emigrated. Her 
susceptibility to the afflictions of the royal family, 
and the sight of the abandonment in which they 
were left by the departure of so many of those who 
had surrounded them, induced Madame de Tourzel 
to accept this perilous position. As her daughter 
has written in her Souvenirs de quarante ans, "she 
resigned herself to the sacrifice demanded of her. 
At that time it was a sacrifice and a very great one ; 
many of the woes hidden by the future might already 



TEE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 117 

be foreseen." Marie Antoinette said to the new- 
governess: "Madame, I have confided our children 
to friendship ; I confide them now to virtue." Ma- 
dame de Tourzel witnessed the scenes of October 5-6, 
1789, the whole Varennes journey, the tragedies of 
June 20 and August 10, 1792, and all the agonies 
of the death-struggle of royalty. She followed the 
royal family into the box of the Logographe and the 
convent of the Feuillants. It was in the latter that 
the Queen, before whom some one had just named 
the Temple, said to her in an undertone : " You will 
see that they will put me into that tower, and make 
it a real prison for us. I have always had such a 
horror of that tower that I have begged the Count of 
Artois a thousand times to have it torn down, and 
it was surely a presentiment of all we are to suffer 
there." And as the governess of the royal children 
sought to banish such an idea from the hapless 
mother's mind, Marie Antoinette replied: "You 
will see whether I am mistaken!" Alas I she was 
not. 

Madame de Tourzel had entered the Temple with 
the royal family, August 13, 1792. But, to her 
great despair, she was torn away from there during 
the night of August 19-20, for she longed for cap- 
tivity as others long for liberty. It was only as by 
miracle that she escaped the blade of the Septem- 
brists. During the examination to which she was 
subjected, she was reproached for having accom- 
panied the Dauphin, her pupil, to Varennes, She 



118 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

was courageous enough to reply: "I had taken an 
oath never to leave him ; I could not separate from 
him. Moreover, I was too much attached to him 
not to endeavor to preserve his life, even at the cost 
of my own." At the Force prison, a man, observing 
a ring on her finger, asked her to read aloud the 
motto on it. She complied: ^^Domine salvum fac 
Regem Delphinum et Sororem ! Lord, save the King, 
the Dauphin, and his sister! " The crowd appeared 
angry. Some one cried out: "Throw the ring on 
the ground!" "Impossible!" returned the govern- 
ess of the children of France. "All I can do, if 
you dislike to see it, is to put it in my pocket. I 
am tenderly attached to Mgr. the Dauphin and to 
Madame. For several years the former has been 
under my especial care, and I love him as my own 
child; I cannot deny the sentiments of my heart, 
and I am sure you would despise me if I were to do 
what you propose." 

Madame de Tourzel and her daughter Pauline 
were again incarcerated in March, 1794, and did not 
leave their prison until the end of October of the 
same year, three months after the death of Robes- 
pierre. She hardly says a word concerning this last 
captivity in her Memoirs. It is only the afflictions 
of the royal family that concern her. " We had the 
grief of weeping for Madame Elisabeth, that angel 
of courage and virtue. She was Madame's support, 
aid, and consolation. We experienced the keenest 
anxiety for the young Princess. We imagined that 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 119 

sensitive heart, all alone in the horrible tower, left to 
herself, and without consolation in the midst of the 
greatest griefs the heart can feel. Our own hearts 
were torn with anguish at the thought of her situa- 
tion and that of our dear little Prince, both treated 
with unexampled barbarity, and deprived even of the 
comfort of weeping together over the miseries that 
overwhelmed them. We never even thought of 
complaining of our own lot, for we were too much 
occupied with that of the young King and Madame." 

On the 3d of September, 1795, Madame de Tour- 
zel, after many requests, at last obtained from the 
Committee of Public Safety an authorization to 
enter the Temple with her daughter and pay a visit 
to Madame Royale. "I asked Gauthier," she writes 
in her Memoirs, "if Madame had been made ac- 
quainted with the losses she had sustained. He 
said she knew nothing about them, and during the 
whole way from the Committee, which sat in the 
Hotel de Brienne, to the Temple, we were dreading 
our probable task of apprising her that she had lost 
all she held most dear in the world. 

" On arriving at the Temple, I presented my per- 
mission to Madame's two keepers, and asked for a 
private interview with Madame de Chantereine. 
She told me that Madame knew the extent of her 
misfortunes and that we might enter. I begged her 
to inform Madame that we were at the door. I 
dreaded the effect that might be produced on the 
Princess by the sight of two persons who, at her 



120 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

entrance into the Temple, accompanied those who 
were dearest to her, and whose death she was forced 
to lament. Happily, the emotion she experienced 
had no injurious results. She advanced to meet us, 
embraced us tenderly, and led us to her chamber, 
where we mingled our tears over the objects of our 
regrets." 

It is easy to understand that the interview 
between the young Princess and her former govern- 
ess must have been pathetic. What dismal things 
they had to tell each other! If the daughter of 
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, the niece of 
Madame Elisabeth, and the sister of Louis XVII., 
could recount the dramas of the Temple to Madame 
de Tourzel, the latter could relate those of the Force 
prison ; she could speak of the Princess of Lamballe, 
whose companion in captivity she had been up to 
the hour of her massacre. The governess of the 
children of France had suffered as much as the 
royal family. Of how many victims was she not 
about to retrace the tragic end ! What fatal tidings 
had she not to give the youthful captive! Oh! 
what a glance into the past ! What sinister details ! 
What oceans of tears ! Can one imagine more pain- 
ful confidences, a more heartrending dialogue ? The 
very surroundings, that fateful, horrible tower itself, 
lent additional sadness to the words exchanged. 
The mere sight of Madame de Tourzel reminded the 
prisoner of all the catastrophes of terrible years : of 
the October Days, the Varennes journey, of June 20 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 121 

and August 10, of the assassination of the Swiss, 
the arrival at the Temple, and the September mas- 
sacres. 

Madame de Tourzel, on her part, experienced sen- 
timents of admiration, veneration, and tenderness, 
on beholding the orphan of the Temple. She would 
have liked to kneel at the feet of the heroic and 
angelic Princess, whose brow seemed to her sur- 
rounded by an aureole. She says: "We had left 
Madame feeble and delicate, and on seeing her again 
at the end of three years of unexampled woes, we 
were greatly astonished to find her beautiful, tall, 
and strong, and with that air of nobility which is 
the chief characteristic of her appearance. Pauline 
and I were struck with her likeness to the King, 
the Queen, and even Madame Elisabeth. Heaven, 
which destined her to be the model of tliat courage 
which, while detracting nothing from sensibility, 
nevertheless renders the soul capable of great actions, 
did not permit her to succumb under such a weight 
of sorrows. 

" Madame spoke of them to us with angelic sweet- 
ness. We did not perceive the faintest touch of 
bitterness against their authors. The worthy daugh- 
ter of her royal father, she compassionated the 
French people, and continued to love the country 
where she had been so unhappy. In reply to my 
remark that I could not help desiring her departure 
from France, so as to see her delivered from her 
frightful captivity, she sorrowfully responded: 'I 



122 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

still feel consolation in living in a country that 
possesses the remains of what was dearest to me on 
earth.' And in a heart-breaking tone she added: 
'I should have been much happier to share the fate 
of my beloved relatives than to be condemned to 
bewail their loss.' " 

Marie Th^r^se spoke first of the martyr-king, 
"My father," said she, "before leaving us forever, 
made us all promise never to think of avenging his 
death, and he was very sure that we would consider 
it a sacred duty to fulfil his last desire. But my 
brother's extreme youth made him anxious to pro- 
duce a still stronger impression on him. He took 
him on his knee and said: 'My son, you heard what 
I have just said, but as an oath is something still 
more sacred than a promise, lift your hand and swear 
that you will accomplish your father's last will. ' " 

"After speaking of Louis XVI., the orphan spoke 
of Louis XVII. and the ill usage to which he was 
subjected daily. ' That barbarous Simon, ' said she, 
'maltreated him in order to force him to sing the 
Carmagnole and other detestable songs, so that the 
Princesses could hear him; and although he had a 
horror of wine, he forced him to drink it whenever 
he wished to intoxicate him. ' That is what occurred 
on the day when he obliged him to repeat in pres- 
ence of Madame and Madame Elisabeth the horrors 
that were brought up during the trial of our unhappy 
Queen. At the close of this atrocious scene, the 
wretched little Prince, who was beginning to get 



TEE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 123 

sober, approached his sister and took her hand to 
kiss it; the hideous Simon, seeing this, begrudged 
him that slight consolation and carried him hastily 
away, leaving the Princesses dismayed by what they 
had just witnessed." 

The young captive afterwards related with pro- 
found emotion all she owed to her aunt, Madame 
Elisabeth. "These details, so interesting to hear 
from Madame's lips," says the governess of the chil- 
dren of France, "affected us to tears; we admired 
the courage of that holy Princess, and the foresight 
which included all that could be useful to Madame. 
. . . Not content to occupy herelf with her own 
dear ones, she employed her last moments in prepar- 
ing those condemned to share her fate to appear 
before God; she practised the most heroic charity up 
to the very moment when she went to receive the 
recompense promised to virtue as tried and brilliant 
as that of this holy Princess had been. Madame 
had difficulty in believing that she had really lost 
her. She had never believed that fury could be 
pushed to such a point as to shorten the life of a 
Princess who could never have taken any part in the 
government. ... It was different with the Queen. 
She had too often seen her spitefully entreated; her 
courage, and her title as mother to the young King 
■were too much feared to permit any hope to be enter- 
tained of reunion with her. Hence their farewells 
had been heartrending." 

After conversing thus about her family, Marie 



124 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

Thdr^se asked for tidings of all those who had been 
attached to her, as well as to the Queen and the 
royal family, and especially of the young girls she 
had formerly seen with her governess. She forgot 
nothing which could interest them. Madame de 
Tourzel and her daughter afterwards took leave of 
the Princess, promising to return to the Temple 
three times every ten days, as the Committee of 
Public Safety had given them permission to do. 

The same authorization was granted to the Baron- 
ess of Mackau, under-governess to the children of 
France, whose daughter, the Marchioness de Bom- 
belles, had been Madame Elisabeth's best friend. 
Gomin has thus described their first visit to the 
Temple: "Madame de Mackau, who was very old, 
and whose health had declined through her long 
imprisonment, appeared to be suffering and hardly 
able to stand. Madame, who had been notified of 
her arrival, yielded to her impatience, and running 
to meet her, threw herself into her arms. The 
former under-governess tried to excuse herself for 
not having reached the tower before Madame had 
quitted her apartment. ' What ! ' cried Madame, 
'could I have deferred for a moment the pleasure of 
embracing you?' 'It is true,' replied Madame de 
Mackau, 'that Madame has come down stairs much 
faster than I could have gone up.' 'It is three years 
one month and one day since I had the happiness of 
seeing you, ' cried the Princess, embracing her gov- 
erness ; then, taking her arm she passed it under her 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 125 

own with affectionate grace, and thus assisted her to 
walk." Having conducted her to the third story of 
the tower, she expressed herself nearly in these 
words: "Let ais weep, but not for my relatives; 
their task is ended and they have received its recom- 
pense; no one will ever take away the crown God 
has now placed on their heads. Let us pray, not for 
them, but for those who caused them to perish. As 
for me, these bitter years have not been unfruitful ; 
I have had time to reflect before God and with my 
own self. I am stronger against evil. I am far 
from confounding the French nation with those who 
have torn from me all I loved best in the world. 
Certainly, I should be charmed to leave my prison, 
but I would prefer the tiniest house in France to 
the honors which would everywhere else attend a 
Princess so unfortunate as I." 

On the day following her first visit to the Temple, 
the Marchioness of Tourzel wrote a letter to Louis 
XVIII. In his response he charged her to sound 
Marie Therdse concerning his desire to marry her to 
his nephew, the Duke of Angouleme, the son of the 
Count of Artois. This marriage harmonized so well 
with the attachment the young Princess bore towards 
her family, and even towards France which had 
treated her so badly, that she was inclined to it on 
her own account. " Another motive which appealed 
powerfully to her heart, " adds Madame de Tourzel, 
"was the express wish of her father and mother to 
conclude this marriage immediately on the return of 



126 TEE DUCHESS OF ANQOULMe 

the Princes, and I repeated to her the Queen's own 
words at the time when Their Majesties honored me 
with their confidence by speaking of their projects 
in this matter. ' Some persons have taken pleas- 
ure in giving my brothers unfavorable impressions 
of my sentiments toward them. We shall prove the 
contrary by giving my daughter's hand at once to 
the Duke of Angouleme in spite of her extreme 
youth, which might have made us wish to defer it 
longer.' " 

Marie Th^r^se listened with emotion, and asked 
why her parents had never spoken to her of the 
projected marriage. Madame de Tourzel responded : 
"It was a prudential measure on their part, so as 
not to occupy your imagination with thoughts about 
marriage, which might have interfered with your 
application to study." 

From the moment when she was made acquainted 
with the wishes of her father and mother, the 
orphan considered herself definitely affianced to the 
young Prince thus designated to her choice. The 
idea of uniting her misfortunes to those of her family 
and of being still useful to her country by averting 
the claims which her marriage to a foreign prince 
might give rise to, had made on her, moreover, a 
strong impression. Some days later, when a rumor 
got about to the effect that the young Princess was 
soon going to Vienna to marry the Archduke 
Charles, Madame de Mackau said to her: "If this 
political measure should contribute to bring Madame 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 127 

back to France, I should rejoice at it." "Ah!" 
replied Marie Th^rese, "I know nothing of any- 
political measures but the last will of my parents ; 
I will never marry anybody but the Duke of Angou- 
Igme." 

Madame de Tourzel visited the Temple regularly. 
The former governess of the children of France was 
on sufficiently good terms with Madame de Chante- 
reine, but she felt, nevertheless, something of that 
rivalry which nearly always shows itself among 
those who surround princesses, even when they are 
exiles. "Madame de Chantereine," she says, "did, 
not lack intelligence, and appeared to have received 
some education. She knew Italian, and this had 
been pleasant for Madame, to whom it had been 
taught. She was skilful in embroidery, which was 
a resource for the young Princess, to whom she gave 
lessons in it. But, having been brought up in a 
little provincial town where she shone in society, 
she had acquired an air of self-sufficiency and such 
a high idea of her own merit that she thought she 
ought to be Madame 's mentor, and assumed a famil- 
iar tone which the kindliness of that Princess pre- 
vented her from noticing. Pauline and I tried to 
teach her due respect by that which we exhibited, 
but in vain. She had so little notion of what was 
becoming that she thought herself authorized to take 
commanding airs which made us sick to see. She 
was very susceptible, moreover, liked to be paid 
court to, and looked very unfavorably on us when 



128 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

she saw that our intercourse with her was restricted 
to mere politeness. Madame had become attached 
to her, and lavished the kindest attentions on her 
during a violent nervous attack she experienced one 
day when we were at the Temple. She seemed to 
be attached to Madame, and under the actual circum- 
stances we could not be otherwise than happy to find 
near her a person whom she seemed to find agree- 
able, and who must be admitted to have had good 
qualities. She left us alone with Madame during 
our first visits to that Princess ; but afterwards she 
always joined us," 

All that had taken place at the Temple was highly 
interesting to Madame de Tourzel ; but what occu- 
pied her most was the fate of Louis XVII. She 
sometimes doubted whether the child were really 
dead. " Not being able to endure a loss so grievous 
to me," she says, "and feeling some doubts whether 
it were true, I wanted to make positively sure 
whether all hope need be given up. From my child- 
hood I had known Doctor Jeanroi, an old man over 
eighty, of singular probity, and profoundly attached 
to the royal family. He had been appointed to be 
present when the young King's body was opened, 
and being able to rely on the truth of his testimony 
as I would upon my own, I begged him to call on 
me. His reputation had caused him to be selected 
by the members of the Convention in order that his 
signature might strengthen the proof that the young 
King had not been poisoned. This worthy man 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 129 

refused, at first to go to the Temple to examine the 
causes of death, warning them that if he found the 
least trace of poison he would declare it even at 
the risk of his life. 'You are the very man whom 
it is essential for us to have,' said they, 'and it is for 
this reason we have preferred you to any one else.' " 

Madame de Tourzel asked the old physician if he 
had known the young Prince well before he entered 
the Temple. Jeanroi replied that he had seldom 
seen him, and added: "The face of this child, 
whose features had not been changed by the shadows 
of death, was so beautiful and interesting that it is 
never out of my mind. I should recognize him per- 
fectly were I to see a portrait of him." Madame 
had a portrait which was strikingly like him. She 
showed it to Jeanroi, who exclaimed: "There can 
be no mistake about it; it is himself; no one could 
deny it." 

The governess of the children of France looked 
at the different rooms of the tower Avith emotion, as 
if they were the stations of a Calvary. One day 
Marie Th^r^se offered to conduct her to the second 
story, where Louis XVI. and Louis XVII. had 
dwelt. The Princess entered there with pious re- 
spect, followed by Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel. 
The death of the young King was so recent that 
his governess had not sufficient courage to visit the 
place where he had suffered so much. But she went 
with the Princess into the apartments of the little 
tower where she had herself been imprisoned from 



130 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

August 13 to August 20, 1792. Marie Th^rese said 
to her: "If you have the curiosity to examine the 
register lying on that table, you may see the report 
made by the Commissioners from the time we entered 
the Temple." Madame de Tourzel did not wait for 
a second invitation. She began at once to turn over 
the pages of the register. There she saw the reports 
daily addressed to the Convention concerning the 
royal family, and especially those relating to the 
illness, death, and burial of Louis XVII. "They 
convinced me but too well," she says, "that not 
the slightest hope of the young King's life could 
be reasonably entertained." 

Madame de Tourzel's untiring devotion found 
means to establish a correspondence between Marie 
Th^rese and Louis XVIII. , and to give the Prin- 
cess a letter from the Prince. She says: "It was 
the reply to a very affecting letter which Madame 
had written him on the day after I visited her for 
the first time. The King wrote in the most affec- 
tionately paternal tone, and she was very anxious to 
preserve his letter, but had no means of doing so. 
I risked my life whenever I burdened myself with 
one of these communications, and it would have been 
the same thing had any one discovered a letter from 
His Majesty in Madame 's apartments. She burned 
it, but with great reluctance, and I was extremely 
sorry to have to ask such a sacrifice." Fran9ois 
Hue also succeeded in conveying a letter from Louis 
XVIII. to the Princess, and to inform her of the 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 131 

substance of another in which Charette, in express- 
ing the sentiments of the Catholic and royalist army 
of the Vendue, protested that he and his companions 
in arms would shed their last drop of blood to liber- 
ate the august captive. 

Meanwhile, public opinion was becoming more 
favorable to the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette. Pamphlets asking for her delivery 
were circulated, and an almanac was published at 
Basle in which, under a pseudonym, M. Michaud 
wrote as follows: "Marie Therese is at liberty to 
walk in the courtyards of the Temple. The two 
commissioners who are continually on guard take 
off their hats when they approach her, and treat her 
with the respect inspired by the memory of what 
she was and the sad spectacle of what she is now. 
Several persons visit her every day, and she seldom 
dines alone. She occupies herself a good deal with 
a goat she has, which knows and follows her famil- 
iarly. One day one of the commissioners called 
this faithful animal to see if it would not follow 
him also, but, to the gentle amusement of Marie 
Th^r^se, it would not. A dog is another faithful 
companion to the young prisoner, and seems much 
attached to her." 

When the Princess went down into the Temple 
garden, she was allowed to take drawing-materials 
and sketch the different aspects of that fatal yet hal- 
lowed tower which was at once a prison and a sanct- 
uary. The sympathetic concerts had begun again 



132 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

in neighboring houses. They were denounced in 
this fashion by a person named Leblanc: "During 
the past four months concerts have been given 
from time to time in the Rotunda of the Temple, 
in the garrets, on the fourth floor reached by stair- 
case number four. This lodging had been occupied 
by worthy people who were paid very high to give 
it up. For the last two ' decades ' ^ the concerts have 
been repeated much more frequently in this local- 
ity. Very elegant women, and men with tucked-up 
hair come there to contemplate Capet's daughter at 
their leisure ; on her part, she never fails to walk in 
the garden of the Temple as soon as she learns that 
the royalist assembly is complete. Then the partisans 
of the defunct court make all manner of protesta- 
tions of devotion and respect for her royal person. 
The concert place not proving large enough to con- 
tain all this illustrious company, they go in great 
numbers to a house in the rue Beaujolais, No. 12, 
whose windows likewise command a view of the 
Temple garden, and there, as in the garrets of the 
Rotunda, they publicly repeat the same gestures, 
signals, and marks of attachment to the daughter of 
Marie Antoinette. . . . On the 1st Vend^miaire 
there was a concert at about five in the afternoon, 
the hour at which they ordinarily commence, and 
the adoration and the telegraphic signs were kept up 
until the end of the day. Persons attached to 

J Under the Republic the days were divided into periods of ten 
each instead of into weeks. 



THE MITIGATION OF CAPTIVITY 133 

various theatres are believed to have been recog- 
nized there, and since the date mentioned, carriages, 
which were almost unknown in this quarter, roll 
through it frequently. Something like a hundred 
persons have been known to assemble at a time in 
the places above mentioned. They are successively 
and continually relieved by others." 

How interesting and pathetic these improvised 
concerts are! Kindly emotions spread from street 
to street, from house to house. Passers-by stop and 
breathe a sigh. The people, once so furious, are 
returning to better sentiments. All mothers pity 
the young orphan, and as they think of her fate, 
they say: " Great God! If such a thing should ever 
happen to my children!" The prisoner descends 
the gloomy stairway and appears in the garden. 
She is sixteen years old, and slender in figure. Her 
features, extremely delicate in her infancy, have 
become beautiful. Her eyes are expressive, and her 
once fair hair is now of a chestnut hue. She wears 
it long and unpowdered. How beautiful and sym- 
pathetic she seems ! Her candor and ineffable grace, 
her gentle and melancholy smile, the premature 
gravity of her expression, all inspire a blended 
admiration and respect. If people dared, the young 
captive would be greeted with applause. The con- 
cert goes on, and the affecting ballads whose har- 
monious echoes arrive at her ears like a consolation, 
charm and soothe her sadness. 

Even the aspect of the prison is less sinister. 



134 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

The sight of compassionate faces diminishes the 
moral sufferings of the young captive. Tears have 
their poesy, and the orphan finds in her regrets I 
know not what bitter and penetrating delight. The 
Temple no longer horrifies her. She clings to it as 
to a consecrated spot. There she seems to see the 
features and hear the voices of her beloved dead. 
Her vividly impressed imagination makes them live 
again. She questions them, and they answer her 
from beyond the tomb. And then the Temple is in 
France, and the daughter of kings loves her country 
so much! A sort of struggle goes on in the depths 
of her soul. On the one hand she is impatient to 
rejoin her uncle Louis XVIII. ; on the other, it will 
cost her much to go far away from a place where 
her parents have given her such noble and affecting 
examples, and she sometimes asks herself if captivity 
is not preferable to exile. 



VII 



NEW SEVEEITIES 



MARIE THERESE was gradually accustoming 
herself to her fate when new anxieties sud- 
denly came to plunge her into sufferings which 
reminded her of her most wretched days. The con- 
servative and royalist reaction that was beginning 
had inspired her with great though transitory hopes. 
There had been a moment when she might have 
thought she need not go into exile to obtain free- 
dom, and that the explosion of monarchical senti- 
ment would be great enough to bring about an 
immediate restoration. She was told the most 
cheering news: that the Convention was moribund 
and had neither authority nor credit ; that the popu- 
lace was humbled since Prairial ; ^ that the royalist 
agencies had begun their underhand labors ; and that 
the cruel executions at Quiberon had rendered the 
men of Thermidor as opprobrious as the partisans 
of Robespierre. Paris, still more irritated than the 
provinces against the revolutionists, was becoming 
the headquarters of all political and social reaction. 

1 The ninth month of the French Republican Calendar, from 
May 20 to June 18. 

135 



186 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

The energy of the Jeuriesse Do7'ee^^ the principles of 
the middle classes, always inimical to the Jacobins, the 
polemics of the press which, since the 9th Thermidor, 
had relentlessly attacked the Septembrists, all contrib- 
uted to make the capital a centre of agitation which 
the royalists sought to turn to advantage. The 
orphan of the Temple knew that out of the forty- 
eight sections of which the Parisian National Guard 
was composed, forty-three had declared against the 
Convention, and implicitly against the Republic. 
A shower of journals, pamphlets, brochures, gave 
the former instruments of the Terror not a moment's 
respite. The Convention had just resolved that 
two-thirds of the new legislative body that would 
succeed it must necessarily be Conventionists. This 
resolution produced a veritable hue and cry. The 
sections protested vigorously against it. With a 
single exception, they all opposed the decrees of the 
Convention, and were willing even to resort to arms 
against them. Marie Th^r^se, who was acquainted 
with all the details of this reactionary movement, 
and much impressed by the marks of sympathy peo- 
ple accorded her with impunity, thought it not 
impossible that she might go directly to the Tuileries 
from the Temple. She was encouraged in these 
blissful dreams, which were to be followed by a 
rude awakening. 

1 The name given in 1794 to those rich young men who united 
in order to support the Therm idorians, the party that overthrew 
Robespierre. 



NEW SEVERITIES 137 

From the 12tli Vendemiaire, Year IV. (October 4, 
1795), a great tumult became evident in Paris. 
There were disturbances in the evening, and seri- 
ous events were predicted for the morrow. In the 
morning of the 13th Vendemiaire, Madame de 
Tourzel and her daughter went to the Temple and 
conversed with Marie Therese concerning the hopes 
they entertained from the royalist movement. The 
day passed in comparative quiet, but towards half- 
past four in the afternoon explosions were heard. 
Gomin came to tell the Princess that they were fir- 
ing cannon, and that having gone up to the roof of 
the tower he had heard a grand fusillade. Madame 
de Tourzel says in her Memoirs: "It was evident, 
since we had heard no talk concerning this, that 
what was occurring was not in our favor, and Gomin 
cautioned us not to wait until nightfall to return 
home. We kept putting off our departure, being 
unwilling to leave Madame; but it had to come at 
last. She bade us adieu very sadly, for she was 
thinking of the sorrows that might be caused by this 
fatal day, and we promised to return the next day if 
there were the slightest possibility of doing so. 

" We went home silently, and in great anxiety as 
to what was going on in the streets of Paris. We 
saw nothing alarming until we reached the Place de 
Greve, where there was an enormous crowd strug- 
gling and suffocating in the effort to escape more 
quickly. We asked a man who seemed less excited 
than the others whether we could safely cross the 



138 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULJ^ME 

bridges to return to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 
He advised us to keep away from the quays, cross 
the Pont Notre Dame promptly, and make our way 
into the interior of Paris. Crossing the bridge was 
terrible; we could see the smoke and flame of the 
cannon incessantly discharged." 

Each report echoed in the heart of Marie Th^r^se. 
"I am weeping over the blood shed at this moment," 
she said to Gomin. The men who were struck by 
the bombs were her friends, the royalists, but her 
compassion extended to both camps, the victors and 
vanquished alike, for all were Frenchmen. Doubt- 
ful about the result of the struggle, she was a prey 
to the keenest anxiety, and fervently asked God to 
put an end to the fratricidal combat which ensan- 
guined Paris. 

Meanwhile cannons were thundering simultane- 
ously in the rue Saint-Honor^, on the Quai du 
Louvre, and the Pont Royal. A man whose name 
was still unknown to the orphan of the Temple, but 
who was to exercise an immense influence on her 
destiny as well as on that of France and the entire 
world, a man who was to delay the Bourbon res- 
toration for more than eighteen years, was making 
his first appearance on the scene of politics, and 
signalizing his d^but as by a thunder stroke. 
This unknown son of a poor Corsican gentleman, 
had been an ofiQcer in the armies of Louis XVI. 
Having been a royalist, he had become a republican, 
and was one day to make himself Emperor. The 



NEW SEVERITIES 139 

Republic was saved by a future Csesar. In addition 
to the troops of the Convention, he had fifteen hun- 
dred individuals under his orders who called them- 
selves the patriots of 1789, and who had been 
recruited among the Sans-culottes, the pikemen, and 
the former gendarmes of Fouquier-Tinville. He 
hurled them upon the steps of the church of Saint- 
Roch to dislodge the men of the sections. 

These had no artillery, and imagined that they 
needed none, their heads being turned by the exploits 
of the Vend^an peasants, who had often seized the 
enemy's cannon without other weapons than their 
cudgels. But they were soon to learn their error. 
Bonaparte's great argument, cannon, was to be the 
victor. He swept the whole length of the rue Saint- 
Honord, and from the upper end of the Pont Royal 
demolished the royalist columns advancing from the 
Faubourg Saint-Germain. At six in the evening the 
victory of the Convention was complete ; the strug- 
gle had lasted but an hour and a half. 

Madame de Tourzel and her daughter went to the 
Temple the following day and gave the young Prin- 
cess the news she was impatiently expecting. " We 
could tell her of none but afflicting events," she says. 
" The Convention, which was in deadly fear lest the 
sections should march against it, completely lost its 
head; any one who chose entered the Committee of 
Public Safety and offered his advice. Bonaparte, 
who had carefully examined all that was going on, 
who knew how disorderly were the movements of the 



140 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

sections and that terror pervaded all minds, promised 
the Convention to turn the affair to their advantage, 
providing they would leave him free to act. He had 
cannon brought up to the rue Saint-Honor^, and dis- 
persed the troops of the sections in a moment with a 
rain of grapeshot. This was the beginning of his 
fortune. Fear and stupor took the place of hope ; 
the soldiers insulted passers-by, and every one trem- 
bled at the thought of the possible results of this 
ruthless day." 

The illusions in which Marie Therese had been 
living for some weeks were dissipated. When she 
learned that the Convention had triumphed, she 
thought the crimes of the Terror were about to 
recommence. For some time longer she was per- 
mitted to receive Madame and Mademoiselle de 
Tourzel, who came on foot every morning to the 
Temple, unaccompanied by a servant, and did not 
return home until night. But this consolation was 
among those of which the young prisoner was speed- 
ily deprived. The Convention had come to the end 
of its stormy career. At half-past two, October 26, 
1795, the President declared the last session ad- 
journed, adding: "Union and amity between all 
Frenchmen is the way to save the Republic." 
"What is the hour?" asked a deputy. "The hour 
of justice ! " replied an unknown voice. The terri- 
ble Assembly dispersed. October 29, the Council of 
Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred assem- 
bled, one at the Tuileries, and the other in the Hall 



NEW SEVEBITIE8 141 

of the Manege : the five Directors afterwards installed 
themselves in the Luxembourg palace. 

At first the new government manifested great 
severity toward the royalists. Lemaitre, one of 
their agents, was condemned, November 8, 1795, 
and died bravely, after refusing to make any dis- 
closures. Madame de Tourzel was arrested at the 
same time on a charge of conspiracy. She was 
subjected to a minute examination, and was three 
times kept in close confinement in a prison for 
twenty-four hours together. As soon as she was 
released she hastened to the Temple, but was 
informed at the door that she was henceforward 
forbidden to cross its threshold. Marie Th^rese and 
Madame de Chantereine were also interrogated, but 
the official who conducted their examination became 
fully persuaded that both had remained entirely 
ignorant of the recent movement in Paris. Never- 
theless, rigorous measures were taken. The same 
decree which forbade Madame de Tourzel and her 
daughter to enter the Temple, forbade Madame de 
Chantereine to leave it. All intercourse between 
her and her family was interdicted, and she was 
treated like a suspected person. The concerts in 
the neighboring houses were not renewed. Alarmed 
by these changes, Marie Ther^se began to dread the 
return of the Terror. Sometimes she thought her- 
self fated to execution, and sometimes to unending 
captivity. And yet the hour of her release was 
about to strike. 



VIII 

THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 

EVER since June, 1795, the question of liberat- 
ing the daughter of Louis XVI. had been seri- 
ously entertained. Austria had opened negotiations 
with the Convention having that end in view. As 
this power was at war with France, the business was 
not transacted directly between the two countries, 
but was managed in Switzerland, by the intermedi- 
ation of M. Bourcard, chief of the regency of Basel, 
between Baron Degelmann, Austrian Minister to 
Switzerland, and M. Bacher, first secretary to the 
French Embassy. The Cabinet of Vienna at first 
proposed a sum of two millions as a ransom for the 
young Princess, but the offer was refused. Several 
prisoners whose release was greatly desired by the 
Convention were held in custody by the Austrian 
government, and it proposed to exchange her against 
them. On 12 Messidor, Year III. (June 80, 1795), 
Treilhard thus expressed himself in the Convention, 
on behalf of the Committees of Public Safety and 
General Security : — 

" The triumph of the French people, the hopes of 
all enlightened men, and the opinion of the whole 
142 



THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 143 

world, sanction the Republic. It would be madness 
to doubt its stability. The moment has arrived, 
then, when it is fitting to consider the daughter of 
the last King of the French. An imperative duty, 
that of the safety of the State, prescribed the seclu- 
sion of this family. To-day you are too strong for 
this rigorous measure to be indispensable. Your 
committees propose that an act of humanity shall 
be made tributary to the reparation of a great in- 
justice. The most foul and odious treachery has 
delivered a minister of the Republic and certain 
representatives of the people to a hostile power; 
and by a violation of the rights of nations, the same 
power has caused the arrest of citizens vested with 
the sacred character of ambassadors. In this ex- 
change, therefore, we cede a right in order to ter- 
minate an injustice. It behooves the Viennese gov- 
ernment to reflect well on these considerations ; it 
may choose between its attachment to the ties of 
blood and its desire to prolong a useless and hateful 
vengeance. It does not appear to us that this mat- 
ter need become the subject of a negotiation; it 
will be sufficient that you explain yourselves, and 
the French generals will be charged to transmit your 
declaration to the generals of the Austrian army." . 

A decree in conformity with these sentiments was 
at once drawn up by the recording officer, and 
adopted before the close of the session. It was 
conceived in the following terms: "The National 
Convention, after listening to the report of its 



144 THE DUCEE8S OF ANGOUlMiE 

Committees of Public Safety and General Security, 
declares that on the very instant when the five 
representatives of the people, the Minister, the French 
ambassadors, the principal prisoners delivered by 
Dumouriez to the Prince of Cobourg, the postmaster 
Drouet, captured on the Flemish frontiers, the am- 
bassadors Maret and S^monville, arrested in Italy 
by the Austrians, and the persons of their suite who 
were either delivered up to Austria or arrested and 
detained by its orders, shall be set at liberty and 
arrive on French territory, the daughter of the last 
King of the French shall be handed over to the per- 
son delegated to receive her by the Austrian govern- 
ment." 

There are few things so curious as this affair to 
be found in the history of diplomacy. The mere 
names of the persons to be exchanged for the orphan 
of the Temple give rise to a multitude of reflections. 
Among the prisoners surrendered by Austria figures 
Drouet, the postmaster of the Varennes journey, who 
by recognizing Louis XVI. at Sainte-Menehould and 
pursuing him to Varennes, had caused his arrest 
and thus been the cause of the downfall of royalty. 
It was this Drouet who, on becoming a member of 
the Convention, proposed in 1793 that all English 
persons found in France should be condemned to 
death, exclaiming from the tribune: "This is the 
time for bloodshed. What do we care for our rep- 
utation in Europe? Let us be brigands, since the 
welfare of peoples demands it." Sent as comrais- 



THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 145 

sioner of the Army of the North, he was at Mau- 
beuge when it was besieged by the Prince of Co- 
bourg. Seeing that the place was about to be taken, 
he essayed to make his way through the enemies' 
camp, but fell into their hands and was incarcerated 
in the fortress of Spielberg. Happily, the young 
Princess was not to be confronted with the prisoners 
against whom it was intended to exchange her. 
What impression would have been produced on her 
by the sight of Drouet, who had left so terrible 
a trace on her memory? The strange caprices of 
a period fertile in revolutions and surprises made 
Drouet sub-prefect of Sainte-Menehould, during the 
reign of Napoleon, and in 1814 he received the cross 
from the Emperor's hands. Under the Restoration, 
the law concerning regicides included his case, and 
he concealed himself at Macon under the name of 
Merger. There he led a very secluded and pious 
life, and it was not until his death, April 11, 1824, 
that it became known at M^con that Merger, whose 
manners had been so peaceable and edifying, was in 
reality Drouet the Conventionist. 

Another of the prisoners was also to have a singu- 
lar destiny, — Beurnonville, once a Minister of the 
Terror, afterwards a Marquis and a Marshal of 
France under the Restoration. Having been ap- 
pointed Minister of War a few days after the murder 
of Louis XVI., he was sent, April 1, 1793, to the 
Army of the North with four commissioners of the 
Convention — Camus, Bancal, Quinette, and La- 



146 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

marque — to seize the person of Dumouriez, who 
was accused of maintaining relations with Austria. 
Warned of his danger in time, Dumouriez arrested 
the minister and the four commissioners and deliv- 
ered all five to the Prince of Cobourg. They were 
held as prisoners of Austria until exchanged for 
Marie Th^rdse. In 1796, Beurnonville became com- 
mander-in-chief of the Army of the North ; in 1800, 
ambassador to Berlin ; in 1802, ambassador to 
Madrid; in 1814, a member of the Provisional Gov- 
ernment. In full favor under the Restoration, he 
followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent, and was named 
Marshal of France in 1816, and Marquis in 1817. 

The two ambassadors of the Convention, to Na- 
ples and to Constantinople, who had been arrested 
in Italy and detained in captivity by Austria, were 
also among those exchanged for the daughter of 
Louis XVI.: Maret, the future Duke of Bassano, 
Napoleon's Minister of Foreign Affairs ; and S^mon- 
ville, the pre-eminently clever man whom Napoleon 
made a councillor of State, ambassador to Holland, 
and senator, and who was afterwards one of the 
favorites of the Restoration and grand referendary 
of the Chamber of Peers during the reign of Louis 
Philippe. How many revolutions are recalled by 
the mere names of these different personages ! 

But to return to the details of the negotiation. 
Conformably with the decree passed by the Conven- 
tion, June 30, 1795, General Pichegru, commander- 
in-chief of the Army of the Upx^er Rhine, com- 



THE NEGOTIATION WITH AUSTRIA 147 

municated the proposal of exchange to the Austrian 
general, Stein. The Emperor of Austria at first 
experienced an extreme repugnance to accede to it, 
but he ended by accepting it in principle. In a note 
transmitted to Pichegru by the Austrian general, 
Clairfayt, he said : " Since it is but too true that in 
the midst of the violent catastrophes which succeed 
each other in the French Revolution I ought to con- 
sult nothing but my tender affection for my cousin, 
I desire you to make known to the French general 
that I accede in the main to the proposition made me. 
But there is another proposition which I think it 
well to add to that contained in the document re- 
mitted to General Stein; its object is the mutual 
exchange of numerous prisoners of war about whom, 
notwithstanding my reiterated demands, they have 
stubbornly refused to concern themselves." 

The negotiations at Basel were long and difficult, 
and terminated only under the Directory. Before 
their conclusion, Baron Degelmann, representing the 
Cabinet of Vienna, transmitted to M. Boscher, the 
representative of France, a note by which the Aus- 
trian government designated the person it desired to 
accompany the young Princess on her journey : " It 
is understood," says this note, "that so young a 
person must not be left, during a long journey, with- 
out a companion already known to her and possessing 
her confidence. It is likewise understood, that this 
companion should be acceptable at the place where 
she is going. The virtues of Madame de Tourzel, 



148 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

and the prudence for which she is renowned, would 
render her more agreeable to the Austrian court 
than any lady not known there. Compliant our- 
selves concerning the rendition of several state 
prisoners and those who share their detention, we 
may hope that they will not be less so in France with 
regard to a choice which suggests itself so naturally 
that it has been anticipated by many." 

There was no longer anything in the way of the 
deliverance of Marie Th^rese. A decree thus 
worded was passed by the Directory November 27, 
1795 : " The Ministers of the Interior and of Foreign 
Affairs are commissioned to take the necessary 
measures to accelerate the exchange of the last King's 
daughter against citizens Camus and Quinette, and 
other agents or deputies of the Republic, to appoint 
an officer of gendarmes fit and proper for such duty 
to accompany the daughter of the last King, and to 
give her as a companion that one of the persons 
devoted to her education who pleases her best." 

Benezech, Minister of the Interior, went to the 
Temple the following day, to announce to the 
daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette that 
her chains were at last to be broken. 



IX 



THE DEPARTURE FROM THE TEMPLE 

WHEN Benezech, Minister of the Interior, ap- 
prised Marie Th^r^se, November 28, 1795, 
that she was soon to leave the Temple, the young 
prisoner was greatly moved. She might have experi- 
enced joy had permission been given her to rejoin 
her uncle, Louis XVIIL, but the idea of going to 
Vienna, where she knew not what awaited her, 
caused her anxiety. She thought the Emperor of 
Austria had not done what he should to save Marie 
Antoinette, and the policy of the Austrian govern- 
ment awoke suspicions in the daughter of the martyr- 
queen which the future was to justify. Whether 
she had a presentiment of the snares that would be 
laid for her in Vienna and the quasi-cnT^tiyitj she 
was to undergo there, or whether, a Frenchwoman 
at heart, she was saddened by the thought of living 
in a strange land, at all events, she received the 
tidings of her approaching deliverance without en- 
thusiasm. 

There was at this period more than one latent 
royalist, more than one high official in government 
circles, who looked forward to a possible Bourbon 

149 



150 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULJ^ME 

Restoration. Was not Barras Mmself to intrigue one 
day with Louis XVIII.? Benezech, possibly still 
more through kindness of heart than tlirough inter- 
ested motives, secretly sympathized with the royal 
family. The youth, the virtues, the misfortunes, and 
the grace of the orphan of the Temple touched him 
profoundly. He showed her great respect, and 
asked what persons she desired to accompany her to 
Vienna. Without a moment's hesitation the young 
Princess named Madame de Tourzel, Madame de 
Mackau, and Madame de Sdrent, formerly lady of the 
bedchamber to Madame Elisabeth. 

The Minister gave Marie Th^r^se room to hope 
that her choice would be ratified by the Directory 
without any difficulty. He added that he would 
attend to all the preparations for her departure, and 
would send her two persons through whom she could 
order the dresses she wished to have made. Two 
members of the administrative commission of police 
presented themselves at the Temple the next day 
for that purpose. In spite of their insistence, she 
limited herself to pointing out such things as were 
strictly necessary, a small quantity of linen under- 
wear, some shoes, and the simplest materials. She 
was unwilling to receive more from the government. 
As they represented that on arriving at the court of 
Austria she would need an outfit suitable to her 
rank, she replied : " If they will permit me to take 
a few souvenirs which remind me of that rank, let 
them return the things which belonged to my mother 



THE DEPABTUBE FBOM THE TEMPLE 151 

and me, and which were taken away from us a few 
days after our arrival at the tower." These included 
body-linen and some gowns and laces. The seals 
placed on the chest of drawers in which these objects 
had been deposited were removed, but Marie Th^- 
rese's wish was not granted. 

Meanwhile public sympathy with the orphan of 
the Temple was constantly increasing. Benezech 
dared propose to have her travel across France in an 
open carriage drawn by eight horses, surrounded by 
persons designated by herself. The suggestion was 
not well received, but the very fact that it was offered 
to the Directory by a minister proved the reaction 
that had taken place. The same thing is attested 
by Frangois Hue in these terms : — 

"At this epoch certain members of the National 
Convention who felt, in common with a majority of 
the inhabitants of Paris, a keen interest in the fate 
of Madame Royale, whose death was desired by a 
few regicides, extorted a decree in her favor in 
accordance with which the Executive Directory 
passed a resolution of which M. Benezech, Minister 
of the Interior, gave me a copy. This minister sent 
me also another resolution which, in consequence of 
Madame's having deigned to request that I should 
follow her to Vienna, authorized me to accompany 
her, and even to remain near her, without incurring 
the penalties of the laws against emigration on 
account of this journey. 

" M. Benezech had spoken to me with emotion con- 



152 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULMe 

cerning the fate of the young Princess, whom he 
never called by any other name than Madame Roy- 
ale. Seeing that I looked at him with surprise, he 
said: 'This new costume is simply my mask; I am 
even going to reveal one of my most secret thoughts 
to you : France will never regain tranquillity until 
the day when it resumes its former government. 
Therefore, when you can do so without compromis- 
ing me, lay the offer of my services at the King's 
feet, and assure His Majesty that I shall be zealous 
in caring for the interests of his crown.' " 

To sum up, the Directory showed real good will 
toward the daughter of Louis XVI. Nevertheless, 
it did not permit Madame de Tourzel to accompany 
her. It mistakenly supposed the former governess 
of the children of France to favor the idea of a 
marriage between the Princess and an Archduke, 
and that the Austrian government would make use 
of such a matrimonial alliance in order to advance 
claims on a portion of French territory. The choice 
of Madame de Tourzel, like that of Madame de 
Serent, was rejected, and the governess had not even 
the consolation of bidding adieu to her former pupil. 
As to Madame de Mackau, her health not permitting 
her, to her great regret, to accompany the young 
Princess, her place was taken by her daughter, 
Madame de Soucy. The other two persons who 
escorted Marie Thdrese were the honest and respect- 
ful keeper, Gomin, for whom she had nothing but 
praise, and M. Mechain, an officer of gendarmes who 
had been highly recommended to her. 



TBE DEPASTURE FROM THE TEMPLE 153 

December 16, 1795, Benezech, Minister of the 
Interior, presented himself at the Temple and an- 
nounced to the Princess that she was to depart on the 
18th, at half-past eleven in the evening. She made 
her own preparations for the journey on the 17th, 
but not with the alacrity and pleasure that might 
have been expected. She selected the small quan- 
tity of linen and other apparel that she wished to 
take, and had the rest distributed to the employees of 
the Temple as memorials of her. Then she put on 
her best gown and descended into the garden, where 
she saluted, by way of farewell, the persons who 
were in the habit of making signs of sympathy and 
respect from the windows of neighboring houses. 
This adieu of the young captive, who by a smile and a 
grateful gesture thanks the compassionate souls who 
have not the happiness of speaking to or approach- 
ing her, but who find means to send her their good 
wishes and their homage by the movements of their 
heads and the expression of their faces, is full of a 
penetrating poetry worthy to inspire the brush of a 
great painter. 

The Directory had decided that the departure of 
the young Princess should take place at night. It 
had its reasons for preventing her from passing 
through the streets of the capital in broad daylight. 
The mere sight of her might cause a revolution — 
the revolution of pity. No discourse could be so 
eloquent as the aspect of this young girl, a living 
legend, the legend of innocence and virtue, of youth 



154 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

and misfortune. Her face alone touched the heart. 
How much greater still would have been the gen- 
eral emotion could people have read the depths of 
her soul, could they have known all the trials re- 
served for this gentle victim in the future ! She 
had not reached the last station of her Calvary. 
How many exiles, how many revolutions, what 
sufferings of every description, the daughter of 
Louis XVI. was to yet undergo ! Providence had 
decreed that the chalice of bitterness should never 
be taken from her lips. 

The moment of departure arrives. It is the 18th 
of December, 1795. It is eleven o'clock at night. 
Minister Benezech, who has left his carriage in the 
rue Meslay, knocks at the Temple door. He hands 
to Lasne the keeper and to the civil commissioner 
a duplicate of the decree of the Executive Directory, 
followed by this declaration : " The Minister of the 
Interior declares that Citizens Gomin and Lasne, 
commissioners placed on guard at the Temple, have 
delivered to him Marie Th^rdse, daughter of the last 
King, in the enjoyment of perfect health; which 
delivery was made to-day at eleven in the evening, 
declaring that the said commissioners are well and 
duly discharged of the keeping of the said Th^r^se 
Charlotte. — Signed Benezech. — Paris, this 27th Fri- 
maire. Year IV. of the Republic, one and indivisible." 

The Princess, with Gomin at her side, is waiting 
for the Minister in the Council Hall on the ground- 
floor of the tower. She leaves it after bidding adieu 



THE BEPABTUBE FBOM THE TEMPLE 155 

to Madame de Chantereine. Her apartment on the 
third floor is empty. This inscription which she 
had written in the antechamber with the point of a 
needle or a scissors may be read there : — 

"Marie Th^r^se Charlotte is the most unhappy 
person in the world. She can obtain no tidings of 
her mother, nor even be reunited to her, although 
she has asked a thousand times. 

" Long live my good mother, whom I love much, 
and of whom I can obtain no news ! " 

In her own chamber were these words which she 
had chalked on the wall : — 

" O my father, watch over me from heaven ! 

" O my God ! pardon those who caused the death 
of my parents ! " 

A few days afterward a regicide Conventionist, 
Rov^re, visited the Temple tower and read this last 
inscription. He turned pale, and as he has himself 
recorded, remorse drove him from the apartment. 

Marie Th^r^se has crossed the threshold of the 
Temple. She takes Benezech's arm. Gomin and 
the Minister's valet follow her, carrying a package 
and a carpet-bag. A sentry is under arms, but he 
has his instructions, and does not budge. The sol- 
diers on guard also remain motionless. Their officer 
alone comes forward and salutes. The night is dark, 
the neighboring streets are empty, the approaches of 
the Temple silent. "I am sensible of your atten- 
tions and your respect," says the Princess to Bene- 
zech, "but even at the hour when I owe you my 



156 THE DUCHESS OF ANG0UL:EME 

liberty, how can I refrain from thinking of those 
who have crossed this threshold before me? It is 
just three years four months and five days since 
these doors closed upon my family and me ; to- 
day I go out the last, and the most wretched of 
all." 

At the moment when she departed thus from the 
fatal precincts of the Temple, Marie Th^rese recalled 
all she had suffered there : her entry into the tower 
by torchlight, the adieus of Louis XVI. as he was 
going to the scaffold, the day when she was sepa- 
rated from her brother, the days when Marie Antoi- 
nette and Madame Elisabeth departed, and that on 
which she learned at the same time the death of 
three beings so dear to her heart. All these sinister 
dates renewed themselves in her mind. And yet, 
it was not without regret that she left the dungeon 
which had been the sanctuary of faith and of sorrow. 
Just as some persons cannot tear themselves away 
from a tomb above which they have prayed, so the 
child of martyrs was loath to leave the abode where 
her parents had given her such admirable examples. 
If she had at least had the certainty of revisiting the 
Temple, to kneel there and pray God for the execu- 
tioners of her family ! But no, that consolation was 
not granted her. Eighteen years later, when the 
unfortunate Princess returned to France, Napoleon 
had caused the tower to be demolished, and not a 
stone of it remained. 



SECOND PART 
THE EXILE 



THE JOUKNEY TO THE FRONTIER 

IT is December 18, 1795 — 27 Frimaire, Year IV. 
It is half-past eleven o'clock at night. Marie 
Th^rdse of France, leaning on the arm of Benezech, 
Minister of the Interior, leaves the precinct of the 
Temple by the rue de la Corderie, opposite the tower, 
and walks through this street. She finds the Minis- 
ter's carriage at rue Meslay, and gets into it with 
him and Gomin the keeper. The street is empty. 
No one sees the daughter of kings depart. The car- 
riage starts and arrives at rue Bondy, behind the 
Opera House (the present theatre of the Porte Saint- 
Martin). The Princess, the Minister, and Gomin 
leave the carriage. Just in front of them stands the 
travelling berlin in which Marie Th^rdse is to be 
taken to the frontier. On the front seat of this ber- 
lin are Madame de Soucy, the daughter of the Baron- 
ess of Mackau, and M^chain, the officer of gendarmes, 
who, like Gomin, is to accompany the young Princess. 

167 



158 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

She takes leave of Benezech, thanks him, and gets 
into the carriage with Gomin. " Adieu, Monsieur ! " 
she says. Then she departs into exile. Benezech 
pulls out his watch. It is midnight. The 19th of 
December, 1795, is beginning. On this day, the 
daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, born 
at Versailles December 19, 1778, enters her eigh- 
teenth year. 

The young Princess travels incognito, under the 
name of Sophie. The government has instructed 
M^chain, the officer of the gendarmes, to conduct to 
Huningue two women and a man (Marie Thdr^se, 
Madame de Soucy, and Gomin) ; one of these women 
is to pass for his daughter, and the other for his wife, 
the man for his confidential servant. His orders are 
to allow no one to speak with them in private. He 
is to occupy himself especially with the younger 
of the two women, designated under the name of 
Sophie, and to take excellent care of her health. 

Marie Th^r^se has herself written the account of 
her journey. At nine in the morning, December 19, 
she breakfasts at Guignes. At Nogent-on-Seine she 
is recognized by the innkeeper's wife. She is treated 
with much respect. The street and courtyard are 
thronged with people. They are affected on seeing 
the daughter of Louis XVI. and load her with bene- 
dictions. She passes the night at Gray. 

She sets out again the next morning and travels all 
day and all night of December 20-21. At nine in 
the morning, December 21, she arrives at Chaumont 



THE JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER 159 

and alights for breakfast. There she is recognized, 
and an immense and sympathetic crowd throng the 
approaches of the room where she takes her repast ; 
when she re-enters the carriage, everybody follows 
her with good wishes and respectful homage. The 
22d, she reaches Vesoul at eight in the evening, hav- 
ing accomplished only ten leagues during the day for 
lack of horses. She enters Belfort the 23d at eleven 
o'clock in the evening and sleeps there. The 24th, 
she departs at six in the morning, and arrives at 
nightfall at Huningue. There she alights at the Cor- 
beau tavern and is installed in the second story. The 
innkeeper, M. Schuldz, knows who she is, and 
receives her with marks of profound respect. 

The Directory had given M. Fran9ois Hue permis- 
sion to rejoin the Princess at Huningue. After the 
10th of August, this former officer of the King's bed- 
chamber had been called by Louis XVI. to the honor 
of remaining in attendance on him and the royal 
family. In the will made in the Temple tower, 
December 25, 1792, the unhappy monarch had writ- 
ten: "I should think I had calumniated the senti- 
ments of the nation if I did not openly recommend 
to my son Messieurs Chamilly and Hue, whose 
genuine attachment has led them to shut themselves 
up with me in this sad abode, and who have expected 
to be its unfortunate victims." 

Fran9ois Hue, accompanied by Madame de Soucy's 
young son and Meunier and Baron, employees of the 
Temple, as well as by a chambermaid and a little dog 



160 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^IME 

belonging to Marie Th^rese, had left Paris an hour 
after the young Princess. They reached Huningue 
several hours later than she did. "My pen," he 
says, " can but feebly express what I felt when the 
daughter of Louis XVI. deigned to speak to me for 
the first time since my departure from the Temple. 
She gave me at this moment a letter she had written 
to the King, her uncle, ordering me to see that it 
reached His Majesty. This was not the only time I 
received the same commission, and, on one of these 
occasions, the confidence with which Madame hon- 
ored me was so great that she commanded me to 
read the letter with which she had entrusted me. 
Who would not preserve an eternal souvenir of the 
sentiments this Princess testified towards His Majesty 
when imploring his clemency in favor of the French, 
and even for the murderers of her family in these 
expressions : ' Yes, uncle, it is she whose father, 
mother, and aunt they have caused to perish, who on 
her knees begs from you their pardon and peace ' ? " 

December 25, the Courbeau hotel was surrounded 
by a crowd the whole day long. An order to keep 
the door closed was issued. The Princess was re- 
quested not to open her windows. She wrote a let- 
ter to Madame de Tourzel, concerning which that 
lady has said : " Madame wrote me from Huningue 
before quitting France. I carefully treasured this 
letter and that I received from her from Calais, 
when she re-entered France, as precious monuments 
of her kindness and the justice she never ceased to 



THE JOURNEY TO THE FRONTIER 161 

render that profound attachment I have vowed to 
her until my latest breath." After writing to 
Madame de Tourzel, the Princess made a sketch of 
the room she was occupying. The wife of the inn- 
keeper, Madame Schuldz, came up to present her 
two children, who offered the Princess flowers. 

Meanwhile the moment when the exchange was to 
be made was drawing nigh. The French prisoners, 
among whom were Drouet, Beurnonville, Camus, 
Bancal, Quinette, Maret, and S^monville, had just 
been brought from Fribourg to the village of Riehen, 
chief town of the bailiwick of the same name, belong- 
ing to the republic of Basel, on the left bank of the 
Rhine. It had been agreed that they should not be 
confronted with Marie Th^r^se, and that the Princess 
should be delivered to the Austrian government by 
M. Bacher, first secretary of the Embassy of the 
French Republic to Switzerland, in a house very near 
Basel, belonging to a M. Reber. The Prince of Gavre 
and Baron Degelmann were to receive her on behalf 
of the Emperor of Austria. 

December 26, M. Bacher, coming from Riehen, 
arrived at the Courbeau hotel, Huningue, at about 
half-past four in the afternoon. There he learned 
that Marie Th^r^se refused to accept the rich trous- 
seau which the Directory had caused to be made 
for her in Paris. The republican diplomat showed 
great respect to the daughter of Louis XVI., and 
wrote to his government: "I have just seen the 
daughter of the last King of the French ; she mani- 



162 THE DUCHESS OF ANOOULEME 

fests the keenest regret at seeing herself on the point 
of quitting France ; the honors which await her at 
the court of Austria affect her less than her regrets 
at leaving her country." The young Princess thanked 
M. Bacher and took leave of the innkeeper and his 
family, who had treated her with affectionate respect. 
She left them some small mementoes, and said to 
Madame Schuldz, who was pregnant : " If you have 
a daughter, I beg you to let her bear my name." 
Gomin, who was soon to leave the august orphan, 
could not avoid weeping. To reward him for his 
devotion, the Princess gave him the following lines, 
written by herself: "In spite of my chagrin, this 
journey has seemed agreeable to me on account of 
the presence of a kind-hearted person whose goodness 
has long been known to me, but who has carried it 
to the highest degree by the manner in which he has 
behaved, and the active way in which he has served 
me, although assuredly he could not have been 
accustomed to do so. It must all be attributed to 
his zeal. I have known him for a long time; this 
last proof was not necessary in order to gain him 
my esteem ; but he has it more than ever in these 
final moments. I can say no more; my heart feels 
strongly all that it ought to feel, but I have no words 
wherewith to express it. I conclude, however, by 
conjuring him not to be too much afflicted and to 
take courage ; I do not ask him to think of me, I am 
sure he will do so, and I answer for as much on my 
own part." When giving this paper to Gomin, the 



THE JOUBNEr TO THE FRONTIER 163 

young Princess said : " I do not know whether I 
shall be able to speak to you again at Basel, and I 
want to fulfil my promise now. Adieu ; do not weep, 
and above all have confidence in God." The inn- 
keeper threw himself at her feet and asked her bless- 
ing; she seemed like a saint to him. Then she 
entered a carriage, and departed sorrowfully from a 
French town. At the moment when she crossed 
the frontier, some one said: "Madame, France ends 
here." Her eyes filled with tears. "I quit France 
with regret," said she; "for I shall never cease to 
regard it as my country." The exile had begun. 



II 

BASEL 

AT the moment when she was delivered up to 
Austria, the daughter of Louis XVI. did not 
suspect all the intrigues with which she was already 
surrounded, and the snares which were to be spread 
for her feet. The Austrian government was not act- 
ing as a liberator. It wanted to make a hostage of 
the young Princess, an instrument of its policy and 
its ambitions. Louis XVIII. had much reason to 
complain of the Austrian court at this period. As 
head of the House of France, and as uncle of Marie 
Th^r^se, he was perfectly entitled to demand that 
his niece should join him at Verona, in accordance 
with her own desire, instead of being kept at Vienna, 
where her presence could only be explained by the 
ambitious designs of Austria. As has been said, this 
power had the intention of marrying her to an Arch- 
duke and profiting by this marriage to reclaim cer- 
tain portions of French territory. Several weeks 
earlier, Louis XVIII. had sent the Count of Avaray 
to Switzerland to meet the young Princess, whose 
liberation was expected from one day to another. 
Having learned that she was to pass through Inns- 

164 



BASEL 165 

pruck, M. d'Avaray repaired to that town, where he 
was at first well received by the Austrian authorities. 
But while thus allowed to hope for the complete suc- 
cess of his mission, a courier was despatched to 
Yienna to inform the Emperor that the envoy of 
Louis XYIII. proposed to conduct the Princess to 
Verona. Orders were at once transmitted to the 
Prince and Princess of Gavre, who had been com- 
missioned to receive the daughter of Louis XVI. at 
Basel, that no one should see the young Princess 
while on the road. M. d'Avaray was obliged to leave 
Innspruck and return to Verona. At the same time, 
Thugut, the Austrian Prime Minister, who was 
always very hostile to France, said to the Duchess of 
Gramont, who was impatient for Marie Th^r^se's 
arrival at Vienna, that possibly the young Princess 
would receive no French persons. Such were the 
sentiments of the government which, while ostensi- 
bly offering an asylum to the orphan of the Temple, 
was really preparing for her a new captivity compli- 
cated by exile. 

Marie Th^r^se left Huningue at four o'clock in 
the afternoon, December 26, 1795, to proceed to 
Basel. She was in the same carriage as Madame 
de Soucy. M. Bacher, first secretary of the Embassy 
of the French Republic in Switzerland, M^chain the 
officer of gendarmes, Fran9ois Hue, Gomin, Baron, 
and a lady's maid followed in another carriage. The 
neutrality of the Helvetic cantons, and their inter- 
mediate position between France and the Austrian 



166 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

dominions, naturally pointed them out as the spot 
where the exchange of the daughter of Louis XVI. 
against certain French prisoners detained by Austria 
should take place. It had been arranged that the 
delivery of the Princess to the Austrian authorities 
should be effected at a countiy house belonging to 
a rich merchant named Reber, close to Basel, and 
very near the Saint Jean gate. The Prince of 
Gavre and Baron Degelmann, Austrian Minister in 
Switzerland, had already arrived with six carriages 
when Marie Ther^se entered the gate. The Prince 
of Gavre addressed her a compliment, to which she 
responded graciously, and then he handed to M. 
Bacher, secretary of the French Embassy in Switzer- 
land, an act thus worded: "I, the undersigned, in 
virtue of the orders of His Majesty the Emperor, 
declare that I have received from M. Bacher, the 
French commissioner delegated for this purpose, the 
Princess Marie Th^rese, daughter of Louis XVI." 
Provided with this act, the republican diplomat 
repaired instantly to Riehen to deliver the French 
prisoners exchanged against Madame Royale without 
being confronted with her. M. Hue then asked 
permission to speak with the Princess. "I have 
been commissioned," said he, "by the Minister of 
the Interior, to deliver to Madame on the neutral 
territory of Basel, two trunks containing a trousseau 
intended for Her Royal Highness. Does Madame 
wish me to open them ? " " No," replied the Prin- 
cess; "return them to my conductors (MM. M^- 



BASEL 167 

chain and Gomin), begging them to thank M. Bene- 
zech in my name. I am sensible of his attention, 
but I cannot accept his offers." 

Marie Ther^se then bowed to Baron Degelmann, 
bade adieu to M^chain and Gomin, and with Ma- 
dame de Soucy and the Prince of Gavre, entered 
an imperial carriage drawn by six horses, which, 
followed by five other carriages drove into Basel 
through the Saint Jean gate. It was about seven 
in the evening, and the moon was shining brightly 
in a clear sky. An officer of the Swiss army. Adju- 
tant Kolb, rode beside the carriage of the Princess. 
As they left Basel, he took command of a detach- 
ment of Swiss cavalry which was to escort them as 
far as the frontier. During the night Marie Th^r^se 
arrived at Laufenburg, a town seven leagues from 
Basel, where the suite appointed for her by the Em- 
peror was awaiting her. 

Lauf enbui-g is one of the four " forest towns " of 
Upper Austria. This name is given to four German 
towns situated on the Rhine above Basel, in the 
vicinity of the Black Forest: Rheinfel, Waldshut, 
Seckingen, and Laufenburg. In the morning, the 
daughter of Louis XVI. entered a church for the 
first time since August, 1792, and prayed God not 
only for her family, but for their persecutors and 
executioners. Having found at Laufenburg the 
women the Emperor had sent to attend upon her, 
she continued her route toward the Tyrol. On the 
way she passed a place where a part of Condi's 



168 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULJ§JME 

army were quartered for the time being. An officer 
of this army, the Count of Romain, has written in 
his Souvenirs d'un officier royaliste : " We were in 
our winter quarters when we learned of the happy 
deliverance of the daughter of Louis XVI. This 
Princess, whose safety had so long been the dearest 
object of our wishes, passed through our quarters 
without our being able to enjoy the happiness of 
seeing her. This caused much bitter feeling." How- 
ever, M. Berthier, an aide-de-camp of the Prince of 
Cond^, accidentally encountered Marie Ther^se on 
the highroad, and notwithstanding the injunction 
to keep out of her sight anything that might remind 
her of France, the Prince of Gavre permitted this 
officer, who was in uniform, to approach the car- 
riage. The daughter of Louis XVI. transmitted 
through him the kindest expressions of good will 
to the Prince of Cond^ and his companions in arms. 
In the Tyrol she stayed two days at Innspruck, at 
the castle of her aunt, the Archduchess Elisabeth, 
and arrived at Vienna, January 9, 1796. 

The young Princess had not been without anxiety 
during her journey. "Why do they give me no 
news from Verona ? " she reflected. " Why do they 
not let me go there to rejoin my uncle and my King? 
Is not my place at his side ? What does the House 
of Austria, so often at strife with the House of 
France, propose to do with me at Vienna? They 
treat me with great respect, they observe a princely 
etiquette toward me, they place imperial carriages 



BASEL 169 

with six horses at my disposal. But would I not 
prefer to all this idle ceremony liberty and the right 
to go to my uncle ? The asylum prepared for me by 
Austria will doubtless be a gilded prison, but it will 
be a prison none the less." 



m 



VIENNA 



THE Emperor Francis II., born February 12, 
1768, was nearly twenty-eight years old when 
the daughter of Louis XVI. arrived in Vienna. On 
March 1, 1792, he had succeeded his father, the Em- 
peror Leopold, son of the great Empress Maria The- 
resa, and brother of Queen Marie Antoinette. In 
1790, he married Marie Th^rese of Naples, born in 
1772, the daughter of Ferdinand IV., King of the 
Two Sicilies, and Marie Caroline, daughter of Marie 
Theresa and sister of Marie Antoinette. Marie Th^- 
r^se of France, the daughter of Louis XVI. and 
Marie Antoinette, was therefore, the cousin-german 
not only of the Emperor Francis II., but also of the 
Empress Marie Th^r^se of Naples. 

On the day of her arrival in Vienna, the young 
Princess was received by a high official of the Empe- 
ror and conducted to one of the finest apartments of 
the imperial palace, which had been assigned her. 
There she received a visit from the Emperor and 
Empress, who gave her a cordial welcome. After 
some weeks of repose and meditation she made her 
appearance at court. She had put on mourning, not 
170 



VIENNA 171 

having been allowed to do so in the Temple. The 
Emperor gave her an establishment like that of the 
archduchesses. The Prince of Gavre was appointed 
grand-master of the household, and the Countess of 
Chanclos grand-mistress. At this period the Emperor 
Francis II. had only two children, — the Archduchess 
Marie Louise, who had just passed her fourth birth- 
day, as she was born December 12, 1791 ; and the 
Prince-imperial, Archduke Ferdinand, born in 1793. 
The daughter of Louis XVI. became attached to the 
little Archduchess, who was one day to be the Em- 
press of the French, and during the three years she 
spent at Vienna she devoted much attention to this 
child, for whom was reserved a destiny so extraordi- 
nary. Marie Louise was only seven when the orphan 
of the' Temple left Vienna, but she remembered 
always that she had seen the daughter of the mar- 
tyred King and Queen. When conversing with the 
plenipotentiaries of Charles X. in her little court at 
Parma, she recalled this souvenir which had left 
a profound impression on her youthful mind. 

From the time when Marie Th^r^se arrived in 
Vienna she inspired an interest bordering on venera- 
tion in all classes of Austrian society, and especially 
in the refugee French royalists, by her youth so full 
of trials and disasters, the precocious yet majestic 
gravity that characterized the pleasing melancholy of 
her countenance, and the touching beauty to which 
grief had imparted a nameless sanctity. As has been 
said by M. Fourneron, the author of a remarkable 



172 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULtME 

Histoire genSrale des EmigrSs pendant la Revolution 
frangaise^ "it was a joy whicli thrilled the emigrSs^ 
shivering in their chilly rooms. This grave and 
coldly beautiful young girl, who had known all gran- 
deur and all wretchedness, and who, the sole survivor 
of a once most happy family, represented the excess 
of human anguish, this pale Christmas rose blossomed 
at last amongst them." 

Yet, in spite of the sympathies she aroused, Marie 
Thdr^se experienced many difficulties and annoy- 
ances in Vienna. First came the removal of the 
Marchioness de Soucy, her travelling companion, 
whose society she had found agreeable, and for whom 
she had a great affection. The young Princess vainly 
expressed her desire to retain this lady, who, like her 
mother, the venerable Madame de Mackau, formerly 
assistant governess of the children of France, had 
always shown the profoundest devotion to the royal 
family. Madame de Soucy, having obtained a pri- 
vate audience with the Emperor, was alike unsuc- 
cessful in preferring this suit. "My cousin is 
strongly attached to your mother," said the sov- 
ereign; "and she has not left me in ignorance of 
your own devotion to her person. I am sorry to 
separate you, but the state of war between the two 
countries necessitates this measure." Perceiving that 
the Marchioness had a paper in her hand, he added': 
" Is that paper for me, Madame ? " " No, Sire," she 
answered, weeping; "it is my farewell letter to the 
Princess." "Entrust it to me, Madame," replied 



VIENNA 173 

Francis II. "I will remit it to my cousin." The 
rigidity of German etiquette required that it should 
pass through the hands of the Countess of Chanclos, 
Marie Th^rese's grand-mistress of the household. 
The Princess, not being permitted to see Madame 
de Soucy, was obliged to content herself with writ- 
ing the following letter : " I have received your let- 
ter, Madame, through Madame de Chanclos ; I was 
much affected by it. I will speak to the Emperor 
about you : he is good ; but you know I feared that 
the state of war between the two nations would 
separate us. The same thing has happened to all 
the rest of the French. I beg you to console that 
faithful servant of my father, M. Hue ; I am sure the 
Emperor will not abandon him. I am sure of your 
courage also. I will pray for your successful jour- 
ney. Say everything that is kind for me to your 
mother. I thank you for the sacrifice you made in 
leaving your country and your family to follow me, 
and I shall never forget it. Adieu ! rely always on 
the affection of Marie Th^r^se Charlotte." 

An exception was made in the case of Frangois 
Hue, and he was authorized to remain in Vienna, 
where he was considered as an emigre. But Meunier 
the cook and the waiter Baron, two employees of the 
Temple who had made the journey with him, were 
sent back to France, January 20, 1796. Madame de 
Soucy, her son, and her lady's maid left Vienna Jan- 
uary 23. 

The daughter of Louis XVI. was not free. After 



174 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL&ME 

having been the prisoner of the French Republic, she 
was now that of Austria. As if it were not enough 
for this girl of barely seventeen to have endured the 
most horrible captivity in the Temple dungeon for 
three years and a half, she was again surrounded by 
snares of every description. Her pretended liber- 
ators were not in reality her friends. She was 
sequestrated in the imperial palace at Vienna as a 
sort of hostage, and they sought to make her re- 
nounce her country and her family in order to con- 
vert her into an instrument of Austrian intrigues 
and ambitions. But the august orphan did not per- 
mit herself to be misled by their brilliant offers. She 
would accept neither the coronet of an archduchess 
nor the diadem of a queen. The husband selected 
for her by her father and mother before they died 
was the only one to whom she was willing to yield 
her heart ; she preferred exile and poverty with him 
to a throne with any other. 

This apparently frail young girl already possessed 
an indomitable moral force. Misfortune had given 
her a precocious experience which kept her on her 
guard against threats and flattery alike. She re- 
mained more than three years in Vienna without 
deviating from the line of conduct she had marked 
out for herself. Her modesty, her gentleness, and 
firmness commanded the respect of all. Beholding 
her, people felt themselves in the presence of a supe- 
rior nature, a veritable Christian, a young girl who 
already possessed the virtues of the valiant woman 



VIENNA 176 

of Scripture. The Austrian government deceived 
itself in supposing that by banishing Frenchmen 
from the Princess they could make her forget France. 
This heroine of duty who, like her father, her mother, 
and her aunt, had pardoned her persecutors and 
prayed for her tormentors, was all the more attached 
to her country because of what she had suffered 
there. In Austria she pined for France, where, never- 
theless, she had been so ill-treated and unhappy. 
From the depths of her heart she longed that the 
nation she had so much cause to complain of might 
prosper and be glorious, and she never mentioned 
it but with affectionate emotion. Never did a harsh, 
severe, or recriminating word pass her lips. The Gos- 
pel had taught the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette to forgive injuries. 

An excellent work by a promising historian, M. 
Alfred Lebon, gives some curious information con- 
cerning this period in the life of Marie Th^r^se. It 
is entitled : L* Angleterre et V Emigration frangaise. 
The author has had access to the correspondence of 
Wickham and Lord Macartney with the British gov- 
ernment. Wickham was an English agent whom 
the Cabinet of London had sent to Switzerland, that 
rendezvous of intriguers, diplomatists, and conspira- 
tors, to arrange the preliminaries of a Bourbon res- 
toration which, having been accomplished under the 
auspices of England, would have assured that coun- 
try a peace conformable to its desires. Lord Mac- 
artney had been accredited to Louis XVIII. by the 



176 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULJ^ME 

English government, and had arrived at Verona, 
August 6, 1795, a few days after the appearance of 
the manifesto in which the exiled Pretender notified 
France and Europe of his royal intentions. 

In a despatch dated January 31, 1796, Lord Mac- 
artney thus expressed the sentiments of the French 
royalists of Verona in regard to Austria : " Although 
greatly irritated by the way in which the Prince of 
Condd has been treated and the resulting disappoint- 
ments to the insurrection in the southwest, they 
seem still more exasperated by the mean policy of 
the court of Vienna and the manner in which it 
has monopolized Madame Royale, who, as they say, 
was smuggled away from her family by a contra- 
band trade with the French Republic ; for they 
express their firm conviction that none other of the 
powers in coalition could have taken any part in the 
transaction or known anything about it. Sir Mor- 
ton Eden has probably informed Your Lordships 
that Madame de Soucy was separated from the 
Princess soon after her arrival in Vienna, and that 
she is not permitted to have any French attendants. 
The Bishop of Nancy, who is now the King's cTiargS 
d'affaires in that city, has not yet been authorized 
to see her. Nevertheless, means were found before 
she left Paris to acquaint her with her uncle's sen- 
timents and his desire that she should avoid binding 
herself by any engagement, so as to be free to marry 
her cousin, the Duke of AngoulSme. At the same 
time she learned that it was the Emperor's intention 



VIENNA 177 

to give her to one of his brothers ; hence she is com- 
pletely on her guard so far as relates to the conduct 
she should observe at Vienna." 

Louis XVIII. could not congratulate himself on 
the sentiments of the Austrian court. There was 
a long-standing rivalry between the Hapsburgs and 
the Bourbons which the misfortunes of Louis XVI. 
and Marie Antoinette had not obliterated. The 
Vienna Cabinet was presided over by a man who 
loved neither monarchical nor republican France. 
Baron Thugut, who was almost as hostile to the 
4migres as to the Jacobins, considered them frivo- 
lous and superficial, and sometimes arrogant, in spite 
of the lessons of adversity. He found fault with 
their boasting, their illusions and fruitless disturb- 
ances, and thought that a royalist restoration would 
in reality afford few guarantees to Austria. What 
he would have liked was a dismemberment of France 
and to see it treated like a second Poland by the 
Powers. It is said that this anti-French Minister 
thought of forcing the daughter of Louis XVI. 
and Marie Antoinette to become a party to his 
Machiavellian schemes. His only object in marry- 
ing her to an Archduke, either Charles or Joseph, 
was to use the marriage for the benefit of Aus- 
tria. It is even insinuated that he did not recoil 
from the idea of dispossessing Louis XVIII. and 
transforming the Archduke who should become the 
husband of Madame Royale into a candidate for the 
throne of France. As a Bourbon and a possible 



178 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

competitor for the rights of this future royalty, the 
King of Spain was sounded by the Vienna Cabinet 
on the subject of this combination. The Duke of 
Havr^, who had remained the representative of 
Louis XVIII. at Madrid in spite of the peace con- 
cluded between the French Republic and Spain, 
wrote to the Baron of Flachslanden, April 5, 1796 : 
" This is very disquieting. Do you not see a plan 
of dismemberment, and a movement to bring it about 
safely by means of a marriage which would give, if 
not a title, at least a pretext for reclaiming in the 
name of the Princess, as her inheritance, the owner- 
ship of the conquered or donated provinces which 
have not formally recognized the Salic law? Is it 
not even possible that they would carry their plans 
so far as to invest Madame with the throne of 
France?" Such, it seems, was the ulterior aim of 
Austria, and it is claimed that Thugut had secret 
emissaries in Parisian caf^s who drank to the health 
of Louis XVI.'s daughter as Queen of France and 
Navarre. 

If this combination should not succeed, the Aus- 
trian Minister hoped at least for some sort of dis- 
memberment. The Salic law, applicable to the 
Kingdom of France, had not formerly been so to the 
Kingdom of Navarre. True, Louis XIII. had issued 
an edict declaring Navarre an integral part of France. 
But Austria, none the less, hoped to press success- 
fully Madame Royale's pretended rights, as sole 
daughter of France, over this portion of French 



VIENNA 179 

territory, contenting itself, if needful, with some 
other piece of the same territory. 

Marie Th^rdse, whose sole ambition was to do what 
was right, indignantly rejected all combinations of 
the sort. The more unfortunate was her family, the 
more was she minded to cling to it, and what pleased 
her most in her projected union with the Duke of 
AngoulSme was that it would allow her to remain a 
Frenchwoman. 

Mgr. Lafare, Bishop of Nancy, who had replaced 
the Count of Saint-Priest as Louis XVIII.'s cTiargS 
d'affaires at Vienna, perceived clearly that Austria, 
even while pretending interest in the French emigres, 
in nowise desired a Bourbon restoration in France. 
The Pretender wrote thus to the bishop : " I am revolted 
by M. de Thugut's duplicity. When the weak resort 
to deception, it is in a manner excusable ; but when 
the powerful do so, one hardly knows whether the 
horror or the contempt they excite is greatest. For 
my part, I feel both." 

Marie Th^rese was equally offended by the pro- 
ceedings of the Austrian court. August 31, 1797, 
Louis XVIII. wrote to the Count of Saint-Priest: 
"I think my niece does not like being at Vienna. 
So I am advised by the Bishop of Nancy, and, more- 
over, she speaks in nearly all her letters of her desire 
to be with me. Whether it is to be attributed to her 
discontent with the place where she is, or whether 
the really pleasing letters of my nephew have made 
an impression on her heart, at all events she has 



180 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

written one to him which so far as I can remember 
my own youth would have turned my head at 
twenty-two ; so much the more reason for striking 
the iron while it is hot." 

In September, 1796, the young Duke of Angou- 
16me had written to his betrothed : " The sentiments 
which my dearest cousin has engraven on my heart 
are at once my happiness and my torment. The 
delays which retard the hopes that incessantly 
occupy me, fill me with the keenest pain. It seems 
to me as if I were being deprived of days all of which 
I long to devote to your happiness." The Prince 
had vainly sought an authorization from the Austrian 
court to repair to Vienna. In spite of the pressing 
and repeated invitations of his betrothed, he had not 
even been able to go there secretly. 

Mgr. Lafare wrote to Louis XVIII., August 29, 
1798: "Madame Th^r^se is not cordial with the 
Empress since her arrival. It is a part of my duty, 
Sire, to apprise you that Madame is very decided in 
character, very thoughtful, and very much attached 
to the determinations she has thought best to take. 
She has settled ideas concerning several persons ; she 
will never like any but those of whom she has a 
favorable opinion." And again, on December 30, of 
the same year : " Madame Th^r^se takes a very 
gloomy view of everything. I have tried to lessen 
Madame 's distrust of the future and reanimate her 
hopes. I communicate the favorable details I receive 
from France, and these communications light up. 



VIENNA 181 

momentarily at least, the sombre tints of her hor- 
izon." 

As M. Foui-neron very acutely remarks, " this mel- 
ancholy indicates a surer judgment and a more cor- 
rect appreciation of things on the part of the young 
girl than on that of the bishop and the majority of 
the Smigres, Nor did her good sense deceive her as 
to the estimate to be placed on persons." 

Louis XVIII. continued to complain of Austria. 
The Countess of Artois having asked to be allowed to 
spend a few days with Marie Therese, and having been 
refused, the Pretender wrote to the Count of Saint- 
Priest : " The response of Vienna to my sister-in-law's 
request to pay a short visit to her niece, her future 
daughter-in-law, is utterly barbarous." 

It was useless for Louis XVIII. to demand his niece. 
And as the Bishop of Nancy, his chargS d'affaires at 
Vienna, was also unsuccessful in his efforts, he sent 
the Count of Saint-Priest back to that city, and on 
June 2, 1798, gave him the following instructions, 
the Count being still in Russia : " The marriage of 
my nephew, the Duke of Angouleme, with Madame 
Therese, my niece, has always been one of my fond- 
est desires : but until now I have not been able to 
accomplish this union, not because the court of 
Vienna formally opposes it, but because I have had 
no settled abode. The Emperor Paul has removed 
this obstacle by giving me an asylum at Mittau. 
However, his further support is very necessary for 
me, because, although I have just said that the court 



182 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULtUE 

of Vienna does not formally oppose the marriage, 
still, I am not certain that they would deliver up my 
niece upon my unsupported demand. I therefore 
commission M. de Saint-Priest to influence the sensi- 
tive heart of His Imperial Majesty in favor of so 
touching a union, and to induce him to make the 
affair his own. Then I should have no further 
trouble from Vienna, and should feel certain that the 
Emperor Francis would raise no more difficulties." 
Louis XVIII. was obliged, therefore, to implore the 
Czar's intervention to put an end to the ill-will and 
the refusals of the Austrian Emperor. Through mere 
pertinacity he ended by obtaining the deliverance of 
the young Princess, thanks to the pressing instances 
of M. de Saint-Priest. She quitted Vienna, May 3, 
1799, taking with her no kindly souvenirs of the 
forced hospitality she had received there since Janu- 
ary 9, 1796, and went to rejoin her uncle, Louis 
XVIIL, at Mittau. 



IV 



Loms xvin 



MARIE THER:&SE of France was about to be- 
come the household guest of her uncle, Louis 
XVIII., and to live in the society of the SmigrSs. 
Before relating the story of the arrival of the young 
Princess at Courland, we shall say a few words con- 
cerning the Pretender and the emigration. 

On the death of the young Louis XVIL, the Count 
of Provence, the brother of Louis XVI. and of the 
Count of Artois (the future Charles X.), had taken 
the title of King and the name of Louis XVIII. 
Born at Versailles, October 17, 1755, his father was 
the grand-dauphin, the son of Louis XV., and his 
mother was Marie Josephine of Saxony. He married 
Marie Josephine Louise of Savoy, daughter of Victor 
Amadeus III., King of Sardinia, May 14, 1771, and 
never had a child. In the last years of the old regime 
he passed for a wit, was very proud of his erudition, 
a great lover of Latin poetry, quoting Horace at 
every turn, loving power as much as the King, his 
brother, disliked it, clever, calculating every step and 
every word, a diplomatic prince, on good terms with 
the philosophers, a courtier of public opinion, boast- 

183 



184 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

ing of his precocious experience, and believing him- 
self destined to play a great part. 

His wife, who was rather insignificant in appear- 
ance but did not lack intelligence, had no influence 
at court. From 1780, one of her maids of honor, a 
certain Countess of Balbi, became the favorite of the 
Count of Provence, but without giving real cause for 
scandal. This lady, the daughter of one Caumont- 
Laforce and a Mademoiselle Galard, of B^arn, was 
the wife of the Count of Balbi, a noble Genoese, colo- 
nel of the Bourbon regiment and the possessor of a 
large fortune. She was more intellectual than beau- 
tiful, but being ambitious and intriguing, her glowing 
eyes, her extreme cleverness, her maliciously brilliant 
conversation, and her inexhaustible gaiety long enabled 
her to exercise considerable influence over the Count 
of Provence. 

The Prince had remained with the royal family 
until June 20, 1791, the day when they left the 
Tuileries to begin the fatal journey to Varennes. 
He quitted the Luxembourg palace at the same time, 
having been ordered by his brother to rejoin him at 
Montm^dy, by way of Longwy and the Low Coun- 
tries. But, more prudent than Louis XVL, whose 
mistake had been to awaken suspicion by taking too 
many persons with him, he not merely observed the 
precaution of not travelling in the same carriage with 
his wife, but did not even go by the same road. 
Having no companion but the Count of Avaray, 
whom he afterwards considered as his preserver and 



LOUIS XVIII 185 



who became his favorite, he was not recognized 
during his flight; and while his brother's journey 
resulted so disastrously, his own was a complete 
success. 

The Count of Provence went to Germany in the 
early days of the emigration, and installed himself 
very near Coblentz in a castle placed at his disposal 
by his maternal uncle, the Elector of Treves, Clement 
Wenceslas of Saxony. There he entered into rela- 
tions with the Prince of Cond^ and organized a mili- 
tant policy. There, also, he quarrelled with the 
Countess of Balbi, who committed imprudences in 
which Archambaud of Perigord, brother of the 
future Prince Talleyrand, was concerned. If one 
may believe what the Duchess of Abrant^s says 
about it in her Memoirs, the Count of Provence 
wrote at this time to his favorite ; " Caesar's wife 
should not even be suspected," and she maliciously 
replied: "You are not Csesar, and you know very 
well that I have never been your wife." 

The Count of Provence afterwards sought shelter 
from the King of Prussia, who permitted him to 
occupy the castle of Hamm, a little town on the 
Lippe, in Westphalia, near Diisseldorff. There he 
heard of the death of Louis XVI., declared himself 
Regent of France, and formed a ministry. Before 
the close of 1793, he left "Westphalia to rejoin the 
Countess of Artois at Turin, where she had taken 
refuge near her father, Victor Amadeus III., King of 
Sardinia. But as this Prince did not care about 



186 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^^ME 

keeping so compromising a guest at court, he was 
obliged to accept the asylum offered him at Verona 
by the Republic of Venice. There he established 
himself in the character of a nobleman inscribed on 
the golden book of the Republic and was well received. 
There, too, he was apprised of the death of Louis 
XVII., and from that time was recognized as the King 
of France and Navarre by all the emigrSs^ and never 
called by any name but Louis XVIII. 

Lord Macartney, who had been sent to Verona by 
the British government, wrote to Lord Granville, 
September 27, 1795 : " The King is certainly intelli- 
gent ; his information is extensive and varied, and he 
has an easy manner of using and imparting it. Nor 
does he lack judgment when he is not influenced by 
the prejudices of his education ; his very prejudices 
have been considerably lessened and modified by mis- 
fortune and reflection. Adversity seems to have had 
a useful effect upon his mind ; it has ameliorated 
without exasperating it. He is believed to be sincere 
in his faith ; he certainly performs his religious duties 
attentively. He never fails to hear Mass, nor to 
observe the holy days of his Church, and he does not 
eat meat on Fridays and Saturdays. They say he 
has never been inclined to practical gallantry, and 
that his attachment for Madame de Balbi was simply 
a tie formed by a long friendship without there hav- 
ing been the smallest link of a more electric nature 
between him and her. He is susceptible of private 
friendships and can be faithful to them. This side of 



LOUIS XVIII 187 



his character is strongly defined by his unvarying 
sentiments toward the Count of Avaray and the 
attendants who accompanied him in his flight, and 
have never left him since. People have different 
opinions concerning their merits, but he alone can 
judge of them." 

The wife of the Pretender had remained at Turin 
with her father, the King of Sardinia. She received 
a kindly letter from her husband every week, but did 
not seem anxious to rejoin him. In reality, there was 
but indifferent sympathy between the pair. Lord 
Macartney wrote to Lord Granville : " The King 
writes regularly once a week to the Queen ; but what 
seems rather singular to me, is that I have never 
heard her name pronounced, either by him or any 
person belonging to his suite. She is still at Turin 
and very well maintained by her father. She lives a 
very secluded life, and sees hardly any one except a 
Madame de Courbillon, who has been her lady's-maid, 
and who, like almost all favorites, is generally de- 
tested by those not in the same situation or who have 
not the same qualities to recommend them." 

The principal counsellors surrounding Louis 
XVIII. at Verona were the Count of Avaray, 
Mgr. Conzi^, Bishop of Arras, the Count of Jau- 
court, the Marquis of Hautefort, the Count of Cossd, 
the Chevalier of Montagnac, and the Count of 
Damas. "They are certainly not well situated," 
writes Lord Macartney ; " the Prince's dwelling, the 
Orto del G-azsola, is shabby ; the furniture is scanty, 



188 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUZtlME 

the domestics few, and the liveries threadbare. The 
meals, a detail so important to Frenchmen, are 
wretched." 

Louis XVIII. was at Verona when Marie Ther^se 
came out of the Temple. But he was not to remain 
there long. Alarmed by the French Republic, the 
Republic of Venice sent the podesta of Verona to 
the Pretender's house to notify him to depart from 
their territory. " I will go," replied the Prince, 
" but I make two conditions : the first is that they 
bring me the golden book in which my family is 
inscribed, so that I may erase the name from it with 
my own hand ; the second, that they give me back 
the armor which my ancestor, Henri IV., presented 
to the Republic." 

Expelled in this manner from Verona, Louis 
XVIII. departed April 20, 1796, and went to Rie- 
gel, near the Prince of Conde, whose army received 
him with enthusiasm. But Austria, always ill-dis- 
posed toward the Pretender, would not allow him 
to remain in this encampment. Baron Thugut 
apprised him that he would be expelled by force 
if necessary. The unhappy exile set out again, July 
14, 1796. He knew not where to find a refuge. 
On the fifth day of his journey, July 19, he stopped 
in the evening at an inn in the little town of Dil- 
lingen, belonging to the Elector of Treves. The 
heat was stifling. He went to the window for air, 
A shot was heard; a ball grazed his forehead, 
wounded him, and flattened itself out against the 



LOUIS XVIII 189 



wall of the room. On seeing the wound, the Count 
of Avaray exclaimed : " Ah ! Sire, a hair's-breadth 
lower! ..." "Well," replied Louis XVIII., "the 
King of France would have been called Charles X." 
After having been confined to his bed for a week, 
the Pretender resumed his route, but he was not 
completely restored until two months later. The 
emigres suspected that this attempt was the work 
of the Jacobins, but the general belief was that 
the Germans, tired of the influx of Smigres, had 
sought to frighten them in this manner, and that 
the assassin was probably one of those peasants who 
slaughtered the volunteers of Conde's army whenever 
they found them defenceless. The heir of so many 
kings knew not where to rest his head. He was 
everywhere treated like an outlaw. The Princes of 
Saxony being his near relatives, since his mother 
was a Saxon princess, he had sent the Baron of 
Flachslanden to Dresden to ask for hospitality. The 
Elector of Saxony regretted that existing circum- 
stances made it impossible for him to show that 
cordiality which his sentiments dictated toward the 
King. The Prince of Anhalt-Dessau made the same 
response. With equal unsuccess Louis XVIII. sought 
a temporary asylum in the principalities of Olden- 
berg, Gevern, and Anhalt-Zerbst. Repulsed on all 
sides, he at last came to the Duke of Brunswick and 
entreated that he might be permitted to remain in 
his dominions until the return of a courier whom he 
had despatched to Russia. In the Duchy of Bruns- 



190 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

wick he stayed in the little town of Blankenburg, 
three leagues from Halberstadt, lodging with a 
brewer's widow from whom he hired three rooms. 
One of these served as salon and dining-room, the 
second as a bedroom, and the third was transformed 
into a chapel and at the same time a bedroom for 
the gentleman-in-waiting, who was by turns the 
Duke of Guiche, the Duke of Gramont, and the 
Count of Avaray. The Dukes of Villequier, Fleury, 
and Cossd-Brissac, lodged where they could in the 
town. They dared not introduce a greater number 
of Frenchmen. The Count of Avaray wrote to the 
Count of Antraigues : " The Duke of Brunswick 
very good-naturedly ignores the King's presence in 
his States; but a wise circumspection forbids that 
the emigres of the vicinity be received." For all 
that, Louis XVIII. maintained a little court in the 
brewer's incommodious house. The women were 
received by Madame de Marsan and his niece the 
Princess Charles de Rohan. 

As for the Queen, she continued to live apart 
from her husband. After having lost the asylum 
she had had with her father at Turin, and vainly 
sought another with the Elector of Treves, she had 
been received as if by charity in the bishopric of 
Passau, a small imperial state which formed part 
of the Circle of Bavaria. The bishop's chancellor 
accorded the permission only on condition that " the 
worthy lady and her suite shall never become charge- 
able on the exchequer of His Lordship the Bishop 
or his subjects." 



LOUIS XVIII 191 



Louis XVIII. was still at Blankenburg when he 
heard of the coup d' etat of the 18th Fructidor 
(September 4, 1799), which deferred his hopes of a 
restoration. " It is a misfortune for France and for 
many honest people," he wrote to the Count of 
Saint-Priest, September 14, " but I know your soul, 
and I am sure that it will not be more cast down 
than mine is." The treaty of Campo Formio (Octo- 
ber 17, 1797) had so strengthened the Directory 
that in all continental Europe no one dared to shel- 
ter the heir of Louis XIV. any longer. The Ger- 
mans blamed the Duke of Brunswick for receiving 
emigres, and the King of Prussia notified him to 
banish Louis XVIII. without delay. In vain did the 
unhappy Pretender write to Berlin to obtain some 
slight consideration, and ask not to be obliged to 
set out in the depth of winter without knowing 
where to find even a momentary refuge. Berlin 
responded by an order to depart at once. The Duke 
of Brunswick was forced to intervene in order to 
obtain a respite of eight days for the royal prose ript. 
Louis XVIII. left Blankenburg in the middle of Feb- 
ruary, 1798. The new Emperor of Russia, Paul I., 
having at last consented to receive him in his do- 
minions, he went to Courland and from thence to 
Mittau. 



THE EMIGEES 

UNTIL 1814, the daughter of Louis XVI. was 
to know no Frenchman except emigrSs. It 
must be owned, their society was not of a sort to 
inspire her with agreeable reflections. The mere 
sight of them was enough to recall a whole series of 
faults and misfortunes for which they were partly 
responsible. The young Princess blamed them for 
having long compounded with the philosophic ene- 
mies of religion, and thought that the blows aimed 
at the altar had been one of the chief causes of the 
downfall of the throne. She had often heard her 
father and mother complain of the emigration. 
Doubtless, while the Terror lasted, for an aristocrat 
to remain in France was virtually to condemn him- 
self to death. But in 1789, before the October Days, 
a struggle against the adversaries of the monarchy 
was still possible. The real field of battle had been 
at Paris, not at Brussels or Coblentz. This thought 
has been expressed in his Souvenirs by an emigri^ 
the Count of Puymaigre : " I could defend the emi- 
gration," he says, " when it was the only means of 
escaping from death and thus became a necessity ; 
192 



THS EMIGBES 193 



but there is no doubt that spontaneous emigration 
as a political system was a great blunder, and that 
it made an excellent cause unpopular by apparently 
associating it with the grasping and malevolent 
pretensions of our ancient enemies." 

As the Count of Fersen mentions in his journal, 
Marie Antoinette had said: "We lament the num- 
ber of the emigrants ; it is frightful to see the way 
in which all these honest people are and have 
been deceived." Marie Th^rese recollected that 
when her Aunt Elisabeth was entreated to leave 
France she had exclaimed : " To go away would be 
cruel as well as stupid." Another emigrS^ the 
Count of Contades, remarks in his curious Souvenirs 
sur Cohlentz et Quiheron: "Towards the close of 
1791, opinion had become so adverse to the Revo- 
lution that it was no longer permissible to remain in 
France, even with the purest intentions and the 
desire and ability to be of service. Those who for 
various reasons had been obliged to leave their places, 
and who felt that they were lost if their example 
was not followed, taxed with cowardice and devoted 
to infamy those who, more constant, and possibly 
more courageous, desired to remain and perish at 
their post rather than go begging in foreign lands for 
the assistance they thought they should be able to 
render themselves. From the beginning of the Revo- 
lution many colonels abandoned their regiments and 
hastened to enrol under the banners of the Prince of 
Cond^. I have always condemned this conduct as one 



194 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL±ME 

cause of our misfortunes. Could one compare the 
usefulness of an armed commander esteemed by his 
men, combating the Revolution by arresting its 
progress and incessantly recalling his misled soldiers 
to honor and duty, with that of an individual who 
had become a private soldier with no resources but 
those strictly personal?" 

But passion does not reason. A fatal current im- 
pelled the old society to suicide. To those who 
hesitated before leaving their country, perhaps for- 
ever, the women sent distaffs, dolls, and nightcaps. 
Moreover, they thought that nothing more serious 
than a trip to the banks of the Rhine was in question. 
In five or six weeks they expected to come back in 
triumph; all that was necessary would be to show 
one's feather, a white handkerchief, the Prince of 
Condi's boot, and six francs' worth of cord to hang 
the Revolutionary leaders with. The chief protector 
of the emigres^ Gustavus III. of Sweden, wrote at 
Aix-la-Chapelle, June 16, 1791 : " All of these exiles 
are animated with the same hatred against the 
National Assembly, and also with an exaggeration 
on all subjects of which you have no idea. It is 
really curious to see and hear them." But let us 
allow an emigre officer in Condi's army, the Count 
of Contades, to speak : " Two or three thousand gen- 
tlemen honestly believed themselves able to bring 
about a counter-revolution. The Prince of Conde 
perfectly comprehended the folly of this chimerical 
dream, but nevertheless, he wanted to prolong it. 



TEE EMIGRES 195 



The emigres used to meet at a caf^ in Coblentz, 
called the Trois Colonnes^ and laugh and chatter with 
the same lightness and frivolity as if they had been 
in the salons of Paris or Versailles. They spent 
their whole time in card-playing, slandering the 
Princes, and grooming their horses in their quar- 
ters." Another officer of Conde's army, the Count 
of Puymaigre, writes : " A strange spectacle was 
presented by this gathering of Smigres, former offi- 
cers and magistrates now in the ranks, who shoul- 
dered their guns and groomed their horses. The 
noble corps contained, however, many bourgeois (if 
I may be pardoned the expression of the time) who 
had joined our cause either through conviction or 
vanity, many old and many young men, children 
almost, and in this strange medley a point of honor, 
exaggerated in certain circumstances, but which was 
more powerful than the rules of discipline, covered 
any man with disgrace who failed to be present at 
gun-fire. The manners were those of the reign of 
Louis XV. 

" In spite of the principles which had caused us to 
leave France, nothing could be more licentious than 
Condi's army ; we were dissolute, but never sceptical 
in matters of religion; the lewdest young fellow, 
receiving a mortal wound, would not dispense with 
the assistance of a priest, and yet, at the same time, 
our favorite reading was the philosophical works then 
in vogue. The minor poets of the day enlivened our 
night-watches. Boufflers was most popular with us. 



196 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

. . . Our hosts could not understand how men, exiled 
from their country for the sake of God and their 
King, could come to corrupt foreign lands ; nor 
how the same men who never ceased preaching re- 
spect for property, could infringe the laws, and ruin 
parks reserved for the pleasure of princes and great 
German proprietors, in order to gratify their passion 
for hunting ; in a word, how they could treat the 
most serious matters with a levity of which the Revo- 
lution should have cured them. These were merited 
reproaches ; but in other respects our detractors were 
obliged to do us justice, and we became the objects of 
their admiration." 

And then the emigre, with renewed esprit de corps^ 
exclaims : " Who except ourselves could have pre- 
served this gaiety which supported us in our adver- 
sities and which blended into one the old man and 
the adolescent youth; this chivalrous idea which 
united them in the same sentiment of duty and of 
honor. . . . Was not this levity of which we were 
accused the sister of our brilliant qualities ? " 

How many times the daughter of Louis XVI. and 
Marie Antoinette had heard her parents talk of this 
heroic but useless emigration ; of Coblentz, so mad 
and vicious, yet so witty and charming, which did 
such harm to the monarchy, though with the best 
intentions; of these vain and censorious gentlemen 
who had the wit to laugh at their ill fortune, but not 
the wisdom to learn a lesson from it! She knew 
the sentiments of the unhappy Queen, who said to 



THE EMIGRES 197 



Frangois Hue : " The assistance of foreigners is one 
of those measures which a wise king never employs 
except at the last extremity," and who never looked 
to the other bank of the Rhine except in her de- 
spondent hours. She knew — for Marie Antoinette 
had often told her so — that if these emigres had ex- 
pended at home half the energy and the efforts 
which they lavished uselessly abroad, the throne 
might have been saved. 

Their illusions were dispelled very promptly. 
The emigration which, when it began, was con- 
sidered as a mere pleasure party, a brief, delightful 
trip undertaken for enjoyment, turned out a dole- 
ful and lamentable exodus whose end no one could 
foresee. The emigre who bore arms under Condi's 
standards had at least the usual distractions of camp 
life and could support himself on the pay he re- 
ceived from Austria. But the decay and poverty 
of the emigre in civil life were sad enough.* M. 
Fourneron makes a striking sketch of them : " The 
frivolous Frenchman who received funds from his 
family never thought that every one of his relatives 
risked his head for each penny sent; he lived an 
idle life and had a horror of work ; he grew weary 
of his room ; he would not deign to learn German ; 
he rose late and went to seek some friend as silly 
as himself to breakfast with him at the French res- 
taurant ; he paid visits and showed himself importu- 
nate and bored. Out of money, with shabby coat and 
torn linen, all beheld their compatriots succumbing 



198 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

to poverty in the midst of strangers whose language 
they did not understand and who regarded them 
with suspicion. The past was heartrending and the 
future gloomy." The single resource of nearly all 
the emigres, was the sale of the trifling objects they 
had been able to carry with them on leaving France, 
but this had been speedily exhausted, and they were 
obliged to work for their living. From 1794, their 
destitution was complete. On July 8, the Count of 
Serent wrote to the Count of Antraigues : " The Count 
of Provence has constantly before his eyes the spec- 
tacle of our wretched emigres, fleeing from the differ- 
ent retreats where they have been lodged and fed 
on credit, and wandering along the roads coatless 
and shirtless. To lack even the smallest means 
of providing for them is the most painful of situa- 
tions." This poverty had increased frightfully in the 
years that followed. It must be admitted that if 
the French nobility had committed great faults they 
were punished for them in a terrible manner. Their 
bitterest enemies were obliged to pity them. 

The great ladies who, when the emigration began, 
kept up the grand manners of Versailles on the bor- 
ders of the Rhine, thinking they were about to re- 
turn there after a few days ; those proud and witty 
beauties, thinking of nothing but gaming and in- 
trigue, who at the court of the Princes had thought 
they were acquiring influence in exile, lived now on 
alms or by manual labor. They had sold their last 
jewels, their last laces. Driven out of Germany, a 



THE EMIGRES 199 



great many of them took refuge in Hamburg which 
offers an epitome of the life of the French emigres 
throughout the world. Some gave lessons, others 
kept shops or practised some trade. But, when night 
came, they met together and, seeking to forget their 
wretchedness, they said to each other : " I have 
been a shopkeeper all day ; now I will be a lady for 
awhile." 

Marie Th^rese was profoundly saddened by all she 
knew of the emigres. Noble and generous herself, 
she was inconsolable at being unable to relieve such 
miseries; and the decay, the poverty, the humilia- 
tions and anguish of these unhappy nobles whom she 
had seen so brilliant and so haughty at Versailles in 
her childhood, incessantly caused her painful reflec- 
tions. At every instant her heart bled. One day 
she heard of the Quiberon disaster and the odious 
massacre of prisoners; on another, of the catastro- 
phes in Vendue and the execution of Charette. 
Again it was the proscriptions of which the royalists 
were victims after the 18th Fructidor, the fusillades 
in the plain of Grenelle, the deportations in iron 
cages, the exiles to Cayenne, which was called the 
dull guillotine. All the families in which the 
daughter of Louis XVI. felt any interest were 
attainted. The wind of misfortune blew from all 
the cardinal points at once, and the French aristo- 
crats, tossed from one tempest to another, were 
hounded by an implacable fatality from every shore. 
All that was occurring overwhelmed with grief a 



200 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

patriotic Princess, for whom, as a poet has said, it 
was an inexpressible vexation to ascend and descend 
the staircase of another. She was astonished at the 
levity of the Smigres when she saw them amuse 
themselves and smile. She sympathized less with 
them than with the loyal and heroic peasants of 
Vendue, who had waged what Napoleon called a war 
of giants, and to whom the Restoration showed itself 
so ungrateful later on. 

At the time when she rejoined Louis XVIII. at 
Mittau, Marie Th^rese was fully acquainted with 
all the intrigues, rivalries, jealousies, and rancors 
that spring up around an empty phantom of royalty. 
Even in exile princes have their courtiers and flat- 
terers, and the petty annoyances of court life beset 
them in an inn as well as in a palace. The favors 
they may possibly dispense some day are quarrelled 
over with premature avidity. Promises are extorted 
from them. Their accession is discounted. From 
her childhood the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette had learned by experience what to think 
of courtiers. She knew all about the egotism, the 
inconstancy, and the greediness of many of them. 
No woman knew how to distinguish wheat from 
tares better than this young girl. With a perspi- 
cacity rare at her age she saw what was sincere and 
what false in the devotion protested for her. She 
could read the faces of her interlocutors, penetrate 
their thoughts, and recognize instantly those who 
were worthy of her esteem. She had none of that 



THE EMIGRES 201 



commonplace amiability which pretends to accept 
the world's counterfeit coin as current money. She 
had reflected much since 1789. Not one of the 
severe lessons given her by Providence had been 
fruitless. She had learned to know the human 
heart at the Tuileries, the Temple, and Vienna. 
Brought up in the school of misfortunes, she par- 
doned, but she did not forget. 



VI 

MITTAU 

LOUIS XVIII. arrived at Mittau, March 23, 
1798. He received a royal hospitality from 
the Emperor of Russia, Paul I., who not only sup- 
plied him with a palace, but with very considerable 
subsidies. How was it that the heir of Louis XVI. 
became the guest and debtor of the heir of Peter 
the Great, and through what strange and unforeseen 
circumstances did the former court of Versailles, 
which had been cast off by all Europe, find refuge 
in Russia ? What politician or prophet could have 
predicted such events ? 

Catherine the Great, the mother of the Czar Paul 
I., had taken an interest in the French Smigres. 
Directly after the death of Louis XVI., the Count 
of Artois, who was one day to style himself Charles 
X., had sought the aid of the powerful Empress. 
He arrived unexpectedly at Saint Petersburg in the 
month of May, 1793. The Czarina lavished honors 
and entertainments on the then attractive young 
Prince. She gave him a sword with a diamond hilt 
which she caused to be blessed at the cathedral, and 
on which were engraven the words : " Through God, 
202 



MITTAU 203 

through the King." She pushed the niceties of hos- 
pitality so far as to furnish the brother of Louis 
XVI. with the jewels he was obliged to distribute 
to the Russian courtiers. Proud of being greeted 
like a Henry IV. by the Russian court, the Count of 
Artois conversed about nothing but battles. 

The upper circles of Saint Petersburg society were 
at this time very enthusiastic for the French emigra- 
tion. On this head we will cite a remarkable page 
from M. Albert Sorel's fine work, VEurope et la 
Revolution frangaise : "Joseph de Maistre said to the 
Russians: 'Nothing is constant with you except 
inconstancy.' The caprice which had brought the 
philosophers into vogue, passed over to the emigres 
without effort or transition. What they had so 
greatly delighted in before the Revolution was the 
old French society, so liberal minded, so subtly 
civilized, so noble in its sentiments and aspirations. 
It appeared to them in 1793 that this was better 
represented by a Duke of Richelieu than by a Robes- 
pierre. The subsequent change on their part is not 
in reality so strange as it seems. They had prided 
themselves on their philosophy as distinguishing 
them from others, through a spirit of caste, and 
the search for elegance. No sooner did philosophy 
become revolutionary, the Revolution democratic, 
and France the people, than they included in the 
same hatred, and condemned with the same arro- 
gance, philosophy, the Revolution, and France 
itself." 



204 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

M. Sorel also makes the following just observa- 
tion on the change effected in the mind of Catherine 
the Great: "People cannot understand how it was 
that this Semiramis of the eighteenth century- 
showed herself from the very first so disparaging 
and ruthless towards a revolution which, at least, 
when it began, was the practical working out of the 
ideas of those whom the Empress openly proclaimed 
to be her friends and masters. They are surprised 
at seeing her preach the crusade of kings with an 
unheard-of vehemence of sarcasm, and raising against 
the Revolution that terrible war-cry of Voltaire and 
the Encyclopedists, 'Crush the wretch!' which but 
lately led the whole army of philosophers to the 
assault. They are astonished, in a word, that, sus- 
taining in Poland what she antagonized in France, 
she displayed the same ferocity in maintaining 
anarchy in Warsaw as she did in re-establishing 
the monarchy in France. They have concluded that 
she did not act from principle, which is very true, 
and that her designs lacked consecutiveness, which 
is a great mistake. Principles have nothing to do 
with this affair. Catherine did not trouble herself 
about them in the least. The Revolution in France 
disarranged her plans, and she detested it ; anarchy 
in Poland agreed with them, and she fomented it. 
She passed formidable sentences against the French 
rebels, but she left the care of executing them to the 
Germans. She was at no pains to withdraw a single 
one of her soldiers from the roads of Russia. The 



MITTAU 205 

sentiments of her people and the remoteness of her 
dominions protected her from propagandism. " 

Moreover, Catherine II. had but slender sympathy 
with Louis XVIII. She accused him of indecision 
and hypocrisy. She would have been unwilling to 
give him a refuge in her Empire. But she died 
suddenly, November 18, 1796, and her son, Paul I., 
who succeeded her, was enthusiastic for the French 
emigration and the Pretender. 

The new Czar, who had had hallucinations in his 
youth, had long been considered a dangerous maniac 
by the foreign ambassadors. In 1791, the French 
agent, Genet, wrote concerning Catherine's son: 
"He will be the most irritable of tyrants. He 
follows the steps of his wretched father in all 
things, and unless the heart of the Grand Duchess, 
his wife, is the temple of all the virtues, he will 
some day experience the same fate; he expects it, 
he tells her so himself, he overwhelms her with 
vexations ... he is gloomy, savage, suspicious; 
he places confidence in nobody whatever." 

An harassed nature, a soul of fire, a mind disturbed 
by horrible catastrophes, sometimes kind hearted in 
spite of his errors and his violence, a blending of the 
tyrant and the chevalier, the Czar Paul, a sort of 
crowned Hamlet, the son of an assassinated father, 
and himself destined to assassination, was a strange 
and deadly personage, but one whose fantastic 
caprices become intelligible when the moral tortures 
inflicted on him by his memories and his presenti- 



206 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

ments are taken into account. An imaginative 
man, he was versatile but sincere and convinced in 
his enthusiasms so long as he experienced them. 
He was infatuated with Louis XVIII. and with 
Bonaparte by turns. For that matter, when we 
have so often changed our own enthusiasms, is it 
astonishing that a foreigner should experience a 
variety of impressions concerning French affairs 
which is shared by Frenchmen themselves ? 

In 1798, Paul I. was in perfectly good faith when 
he took Condi's army into his pay and offered mag- 
nificent hospitality to Louis XVIII. He recalled, 
and not without emotion, the welcome he had 
received at Versailles from Louis XVI. in 1782, 
when he was travelling under the name of the Count 
du Nord. At that time the royal star of France, 
like a setting sun, was still illumining the horizon 
with its splendid lustre, and the court of Versailles 
took a sort of coquettish pleasure in displaying all 
its brilliancy to the Russian Prince. Never had a 
more dazzling ball been given in the Gallery of the 
Mirrors. Never had the Little Trianon exhibited 
more elegance and charm. The Prince of Conde, 
rivalling the King himself in point of luxury, gave 
an astonishingly magnificent entertainment to the 
son of Catherine the Great; Chantilly equalled, if 
it did not surpass, Versailles; and the Parisians 
exclaimed: "The King has received the Count du 
Nord like a friend, the Duke of Orleans like a 
bourgeois^ and the Prince of Conde like a sovereign." 



MITTAU 207 

What tragedies had occurred since then! Louis 
XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Madame Elisabeth 
had been beheaded, the two brothers of Louis XVI. 
proscribed, and the young Marie Th^r^se of France, 
the charming child who had so fascinated the Rus- 
sian Prince at Versailles, was now the orphan of the 
Temple ! 

At the close of 1797, the Prince of Cond^, the 
splendid proprietor of that marvellous chateau of 
Chantilly which remained like a dream of fairyland 
in the memory of Paul I., was an outlaw whose 
army, which had been alternately in the pay of Aus- 
tria and England, no longer found any Power will- 
ing to support it. It was then the Czar conceived 
the notion of taking it into his service. He sent one 
of his aides-de-camp. Prince Gortchakoff, to Uberlin- 
gen, on Lake Constance, where the Prince of Condd 
had established his headquarters, and his proposal 
was heartily welcomed. Conde's army at once took 
up its march toward Russia. One of its officers, the 
Count of Puymaigre, has written in his curious 
Souvenirs: "We did not reach the shores of the 
Bug, the boundary of the Russian Empire, until 
some time in the month of January, 1798. I 
remember that it was a foggy and very cold day 
when we crossed the frontier. There, to our regret, 
we left off our white cockades, the symbol and goal 
of all our efforts, to assume the Muscovite insignia. 
A pope, or Russian priest, who was in a miserable 
cabin on the bank of the river, made us swear on a 



208 THE BUCIIESS OF ANGOULEME 

Greek Gospel, our oaths of fidelity to our new sov- 
ereign, the Czar. The SmigrSs^ transformed into 
Russians as a result of so many strange events, pre- 
sented a singular spectacle. . . . Those among 
us who, on account of their rank or social habits 
thought it their duty or pleasure to visit the Polish 
nobility were, from the time of our arrival, perfectly 
well received. . . . The women especially showed 
themselves so enthusiastic that they provided us 
with fashionable clothes. But this fervor did not 
last long, or was at least restrained within narrow 
limits. So many indiscretions, impertinences rather, 
it must needs be said, were committed by our young 
men that many doors were closed against us. The 
same thing had happened in Germany." 

As one sees, Condi's officer does not spare his 
comrades overmuch. "The Czar," he adds, "pro- 
scribed philosophic works, and yet in spite of the 
most formal ukases, I have nowhere seen Voltaire, 
Rousseau, Raynal, and others of that crew more 
widely diffused or in greater credit than in Poland. 
They formed the favorite reading of both married 
and unmarried ladies, who took pains to lend their 
works while recommending us to keep them secret. 
I have already said that, notwithstanding the pur- 
pose of our emigration, liberal ideas found their way 
into our ranks as well as elsewhere. ... A ukase, 
or imperial decree, forbade waltzing in any part of 
the Empire, because the Empress had contracted an 
inflammation of the lungs by waltzing too much. 



MtTTAXJ 209 

This accident, therefore, was to change the cus- 
toms of all the populations between Germany and 
the great wall of China! I thought this a trifle 
arbitrary, but we evaded it by waltzing with closed 
doors ... as if we were conspirators. . . . An 
officer of Condi's army who bore the fine name of 
Beaumanoir was sent to Siberia on account of an 
intercepted letter he had written to one of his friends 
at Constance, in which he declaimed against serf- 
dom and despotism. The same man had nearly lost 
his life in France and been obliged to emigrate 
because he had published his opinions on the abuse 
of liberty. This was mocking at misfortune." 

Louis XVIII. was to expiate dearly the hospital- 
ity offered him by the Emperor Paul I. At first its 
character was not simply courteous, but magnificent. 
On March 23, 1798, the Pretender with his nephew, 
the young Duke of Angouleme, made a formal entry 
into Mittau. The different guilds of artisans came 
to meet him, and the former palace of the Dukes of 
Courland, which he was to occupy, was manned by 
as many guards as if the Czar himself had been 
expected. 

Paul I. carried his delicate attentions so far as to 
provide the Prince, whom he considered the King of 
France and Navarre, with a special guard of one 
hundred noble cavaliers chosen from among the 
former body-guard of Louis XVI. The Count of 
Auger, one of that unhappy sovereign's most faith- 
ful adherents, was appointed commander of this de- 



210 THE DUCHESS OF ANQOULEME 

tachment, drawn from Condi's army and paid by the 
Czar. 

Until 1795, when Courland and S^migalle were 
annexed to the Russian Empire, Mittau had been 
the capital of these two duchies. It contained a 
population of about twelve thousand souls, and its 
only remarkable edifice was the chateau, situated at 
the end of the town on the Riga road, along the left 
bank of a little river called the Grosbach. It was 
built in the form of a square, with a courtyard in 
the middle, and was surrounded by a moat filled 
with water. Its large and well-arranged apartments 
made it a very suitable abode for Louis XVIII. He 
had with him the Count of Avaray, the Duke of 
Guiche, the Count of Coss^-Brissac, the Marquis of 
Jaucourt, the Count of La Chapelle, the Duke 
of Villequier, the Marquis of Sourdis, the Viscount 
of Agoult, the Chevalier of Montaignac, the Cheva- 
lier of Boisheuil, M. de Guilhermy, a former deputy 
to the States-General, and M. de Courvoisier. His 
almoner was the venerable Abbe Edgeworth of Fir- 
mont, who had attended Louis XVI. on the scaffold. 

"In this palace of a dispossessed sovereign," 
writes the Baron of Barante in his Notice sur le 
Comte de Saint-Priest^ "Louis XVIII. set up a 
simulacrum of Versailles. The minute observances 
of etiquette, the presence of several former courtiers 
as faithful to their accustomed ways of thinking 
as to their humble sentiments of devotion, the old 
body-guards surrounding him when he went to the 



MITTAU 211 

chapel, and the whole petty reproduction of the 
pompous life of courts, where one encountered even 
the ambitions, jealousies, and intrigues of palace 
servants, formed an easy and agreeable position, for 
Louis XVIII. based upon his beatific consciousness 
of his rights; he seemed to think he was enjoying 
the very essentials of royalty. Sensible men, seeing 
him thus satisfied, pitied him less for his misfor- 
tunes than for his contentment." 

At the beginning of his sojourn at Mittau, Louis 
XVIII. was treated respectfully by the Russian 
court, because Paul I., thoroughly engrossed by 
his schemes concerning the Order of Malta, wished 
to make royalist France enter into his religious 
and chivalrous combinations. Although cut off from 
the Roman communion by the schism of Photius, 
the Russian sovereign had conceived the notion of 
making himself grand-master of a military and 
religious order of which the Pope was superior. 
The taking of Malta, by General Bonaparte in June, 
1798, had entailed the destruction of the sovereign 
order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The three " lan- 
guages " ^ of Provence, Auvergne, and France were 
no longer in existence. That of Italy was under 
French domination. The silence of the grand- 
master, Hompesch, who had retired to Trieste and 
obstinately refused to explain his conduct, decided 
the grand-prior of Russia to offer the grand-master- 

1 The eight nations which composed the order of Saint John 
of Jerusalem were spoken of as languages. 



212 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

ship of the order to the Emperor Paul I. The 
grand-priors of Bohemia, Bavaria, and Germany- 
determined to follow the example of Russia. The 
former grand-master, Hompesch, who had already 
sold the island of Malta to the French fleet, sold 
also his signature to all these acts and approved all 
the concessions. Thenceforward the Czar, adding 
the title of Grand-master of the Order of Saint John 
of Jerusalem to that of Emperor of All the Russias, 
held chapters, distributed commanderies, and trans- 
formed his generals into crusading knights. Kou- 
chebef was grand-admiral of the order; Sievers, 
grand-hospitaller ; and Flaschlander, turcopolier. 
The highest mark of favor at the Russian court was 
a Maltese cross, a commandery, very well endowed, 
for that matter, in peasant souls. 

A certain coolness arose between Paul I. and 
Louis XVIII. on the subject of the order. The 
Duke of Angouleme was grand-prior of France. 
When the Czar apprised the young Prince of the 
dignity he had conferred upon himself, the latter, 
who regarded the proceeding as irregular, evaded 
the subject by saying that his approaching marriage 
was about to put him entirely outside of the Order 
of Malta. This response produced a very bad effect 
in Saint Petersburg. In order to appease the Czar, 
the Pretender suggested that it would be well to 
unite the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem to the 
hospitaller order of Saint Lazarus, the grand-ribbon 
of which he sent him, accompanied by an amiable 



MITTAU 213 

letter which the Abb^ Edgeworth of Firmont was 
commissioned to deliver. But this attention did 
not lessen the Czar's ill-humor. On the contrary, 
it ofEended him that he should be offered the decora- 
tion of any order except that holding the first rank 
in France. He refused the ribbon of Saint Lazarus, 
and it became necessary to send him that of the 
Holy Spirit. 

As a matter of fact, the idea of renewing the 
Order of Malta was not so fantastic on the part of 
Paul I. as it may seem at first glance. As has been 
remarked by the Abh6 Georgel, who was concerned 
in the affairs of the grand-priory of Germany, if 
Malta were retaken as was hoped, its position in 
the middle of the Mediterranean would afford an 
Emperor of Russia who was grand-master efficacious 
means of imposing on the Ottoman court; moreover, 
the advantage of being at the head of all the nobility 
of Europe would considerably augment the influ- 
ence which the Russian Emperors have always been 
ambitious to exercise in the political affairs of the 
continent. 

In reality, Louis XVIII. , as the heir of Saint 
Louis and the eldest son of the Church, was not 
well-pleased to see a schismatic prince placing him- 
self at the head of an order whose history was 
blended with that of the Holy See. There was a 
latent rivalry between Mittau and Saint Petersburg ; 
if Louis XVIII. receiving not only a dwelling-place, 
but an annual pension of 200,000 roubles from the 



214 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

Czar, felt himself somewhat humiliated by living on 
the charitable subsidies of a foreign power, Paul I., 
on the other hand, was occasionally jealous of a 
guest whose blazon was far more illustrious than his 
own. The Baron of Barante, in his Notice sur le 
Comte de Saint-Priest, has made the following obser- 
vation on this head: "The hospitality accorded by 
the Emperor Paul was in nowise sympathetic. The 
royal title was never recognized; no visit of the 
French princes to Saint Petersburg was ever 
authorized; never did the Emperor or his sons come 
to Mittau to console the exiled royal family. Louis 
was incessantly obliged to entreat privileges or 
ask for consideration. At Saint Petersburg people 
mocked at the etiquette of the little court at Mittau, 
at the receptions, the royal Mass, the body-guards, 
the dinner served at two tables — all of those usages 
that consorted ill with a humble position, and bore 
too little resemblance to the simple, easy military 
fashions of the Russian court, where etiquette is 
reserved for great and rare occasions." It was an 
essentially precarious hospitality which the daughter 
of Louis XVI. was to receive at Mittau after so 
many trials and disasters of every sort. A clear- 
sighted observer could already have predicted that 
the Czar's enthusiasm for Louis XVIII. and the 
French emigration would be of short duration. 



VII 

THE AERIVAL OF MARIE THERBSE 

LOUIS XVIII. had been at Mittau more than a 
year without being able to summon his wife 
and his niece to rejoin him there. And he desired 
a reunion with his wife, who was then under the 
influence of Madame de Gourbillon, though less 
from sentiment than convenience. The Queen, as 
she was called, demanded an establishment entirely 
out of keeping with their common poverty. "The 
statement forwarded to M. de Villequier by M. de 
Virieu," wrote the Pretender, "would certainly be 
very moderate for the Queen of France, but circum- 
stances oblige us to abridge it still further." He 
cut off three of the persons named by the Princess 
as requisite for her service. Moreover, Paul I. 
was beginning to find that the little court at Mittau 
cost him too much. The Count of Saint-Priest, 
who had been sent to Saint Petersburg to ask for 
increased supplies, said in a letter to Louis XVIII. : 
" Your Majesty would be amazed at the mean way in 
which this court treats the affair of the Queen and 
Madame Th^rese at Mittau. It is very unlike the 
display got up for Your Majesty's journey. They 

215 



216 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULMe 

say the Emperor is so annoyed by the large party of 
forty-four accompanying the Marshal of Broglie that 
he has said: 'Are we in Peru, or are they on a 
pillaging expedition ? ' " 

Through economy and for other reasons, Louis 
XVIII. was especially anxious to get rid of Madame 
de Gourbillon, whom he found disagreeable. He 
wrote to his wife, May 31, 1799 : " If my entreaties 
and our affection do not move you, and you can 
resolve to compromise me with the Emperor of 
Russia, whom your resistance must have given very 
queer ideas about us two, Madame Gourbillon may 
come to Mittau, but I swear that she shall not set 
foot in the palace. Once more, my dear friend, 
yield to our affection, and let the joy I shall expe- 
rience at seeing you again be increased, if that is 
possible, by this condescension on your part. I feel 
no hesitation in urging this, because it is solely 
your own interest that causes me to speak." 

If Louis XVIII. was but moderately anxious for 
a reunion with his wife, he was ardently desirous 
to see his niece arrive ; for he thoroughly understood 
the prestige and poetic charm which the presence of 
the orphan of the Temple would diffuse over the 
royal cause and the little court of Mittau. Already 
there was something legendary about the daughter 
of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. She awak- 
ened an interest mingled with veneration wherever 
she appeared, and her uncle knew very well that in 
Russia as well as in France, Switzerland, and Aus- 



THE ABRIVAL OF MARIE TEERESE 217 

tria, she would not merely touch imaginations, but 
move hearts. As to the Duke of Angouleme, he 
was awaiting his young betrothed with extreme 
impatience; as early as January 9, 1799, he had 
written to several emigres to announce the speedy 
conclusion of an event upon which he declared 
the happiness of his life depended. 

The Queen arrived at Mittau June 3, 1799. She 
had not seen her husband in eight years, and the 
pair were perfectly accustomed to live far apart. 
Madame de Gourbillon did not reside in the chateau, 
but had a lodging in the neighborhood. 

The next day, June 4, occurred the long-desired 
reunion between Louis XVIII. and his niece, Marie 
Th^rese. The King set off to meet her very early 
in the morning. The first post-house had been 
appointed for the rendezvous, but the young Prin- 
cess travelled so fast that she reached it before the 
King, and went further along the highroad to meet 
him. As soon as the two carriages came near each 
other, she alighted. Louis XVIII. and the Duke of 
Angouleme did likewise. The young Princess 
pressed toward her uncle through clouds of dust, 
and he, with arms extended, ran to meet and press 
her to his heart. Unable to prevent her from 
throwing herself at his feet, he hastened to lift 
her up. "At last I see you again," she exclaimed. 
" At last I am happy. Watch over me, be my 
father." As the Count of Saint-Priest wrote to the 
Chevalier Vern^gues: "Tears and sobs were the 



218 THE DXICHESS OF ANGOUL:tME 

first proofs of the profound sentiments that filled 
their hearts. The first tribute rendered to nature 
and to the memory of such misfortunes gave place to 
expressions of the tenderest recognition. Mgr. the 
Duke of Angouleme, withheld by respect, yet urged 
forward by a thousand different sentiments, wept 
over his cousin's hand, while the King, in the 
deepest emotion, and with eyes filled with tears, 
pressed the Princess to his heart, and at the same 
time presented the husband he had given her. The 
King, so good and so worthy of a better fate, placed 
thus between his adopted children, felt for the first 
time that he might still enjoy some moments of 
happiness." 

Louis XVIII. had not seen his niece since June 
20, 1791, at the moment when the fatal journey 
to Varennes began. Eight years had passed since 
then. An accomplished young girl had succeeded 
to the graceful child. What physical and moral 
progress ! What a soft and penetrating charm ! A 
fair lily that had survived a cruel storm might 
have been taken as an emblem by this young virgin 
who had suffered and wept so much, and who bore 
the marks of an incurable sadness on her melancholy 
and affecting countenance. The Count of Saint- 
Priest writes: "We admire in the features and 
bearing of Marie Th^r^se, and in her speech and 
the animation of her countenance, the loftiness 
and grace of Marie Antoinette. France will recog- 
nize in her, with joy as well as sadness, the features 



THE ARBIVAL OF MARIE THERkSE 219 

of the unfortunate Louis XVI., embellished by 
youth, freshness, and serenity; and by a happy 
chance, the Princess reminds one of Madame Elisa- 
beth also." 

Shouts of joy resounded on all sides when the 
daughter of the martyr King and Queen arrived at 
the chateau of Mittau. " Everybody ran, " says the 
Abb^ de Tressau, a witness of this pathetic scene; 
"all coldness and disagreements were at an end; it 
seemed a sanctuary in which all hearts were about 
to blend. Hungry glances were fastened on the 
Queen's apartment. It was not until after Marie 
Th^r^se had paid her respects to Her Majesty that, 
conducted by the King, she came to show herself to 
our eyes, too drowned in tears to be able to distin- 
guish her features." Louis XVIIL led her at first 
to the Abb^ Edgeworth of Firmont, presenting her 
afterwards to the former body-guards of Louis XVI., 
saying as he did so : " Here are the faithful guards 
of those whom we lament." Then, turning towards 
these servitors, as devoted to him as they had been 
to his unfortunate brother, he added: "At last she 
is ours; we will never leave her again; we are no 
longer strangers to happiness." 

Emotion reached its height untouched by any 
falsity or exaggeration, for it had its source in those 
sentiments of morality and pity which do honor to 
the human soul. After returning to her apartment, 
the young Princess sent for the Abbe Edgeworth, 
him who had said to Louis XVI. on the steps of the 



220 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

scaffold: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven." 
When she found herself face to face with the vener- 
able priest whose presence evoked souvenirs so cruel 
yet so august, she nearly fainted. Alarmed, he 
wished to call for assistance. "No," she said, "let 
me weep before you alone. These tears console me." 

"The royal family dined alone," the Abb^ de 
Tressau writes again, "and towards five o'clock in 
the evening we had the honor of being presented to 
Madame. This was our first opportunity to contem- 
plate her whole appearance. It seemed as though 
heaven had wished to unite to her freshness and 
beauty a sacred character which should render her 
more dear and venerable to the French people. Her 
countenance reminded us of Louis XVI., of Marie 
Antoinette, and of Madame Elisabeth. These 
august resemblances are so great that we felt the 
need of invoking those whom they recalled. These 
souvenirs and the presence of Madame seemed to 
bring heaven and earth together, and assuredly 
whenever she wishes to speak in their name, her 
gentle and generous soul will compel all sentiments 
to conform to hers." 

And the royalist priest adds, in a dithyrambic and 
enthusiastic style then assumed by the courtiers of 
exile and misfortune, but which later on, under the 
Restoration, was too often employed by the courtiers 
of fortune : " Frenchmen ! behold her whom you alone 
can render happy by returning to your former vir- 
tues and your love for your kings. Behold her 



THE ARRIVAL OF MARIE THERESE 221 

who asks to return among you, in order to be, in 
union with the King her uncle, the executrix of the 
testament of Louis XVI., concerning which their 
hearts are in such accord: the pardon of injuries. 
She comes, her heart full of tender and religious 
sentiments, to love and console you for your long 
afflictions. She comes to ennoble your courage and 
legitimate your glory. She comes adorned by her 
innocence and youth, her griefs and her resem- 
blances. She comes surrounded by that tribute of 
good wishes due to her from all that is honest, loyal, 
sensible, and faithful on this earth. She comes like 
the angel of peace to disarm vengeance and cause 
the furies of war to cease. Let your hearts recall 
her, and you will see your harbors open and your 
commerce reborn; your children will no longer be 
torn from your arms and led to death ; jou will find 
repose, happiness, and the esteem of the universe." 

Marie Th^rdse at once became attached to her 
young betrothed. Son of the Count of Artois (the 
future Charles X.) and Marie Ther^se of Savoy, the 
daughter of Victor Amadeus III., King of Sardinia, 
Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of AngoulSme, 
was not yet twenty-four years old, having been born 
at Versailles, August 6, 1775. Leaving France 
with his father in 1789, after the taking of the 
Bastille, he went to his grandfather, the King of 
Sardinia, at Turin. He left the dominions of that 
Prince in August, 1792, and made a campaign 
in Germany with Condi's army. He afterwards 



222 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

spent some time at Holyrood, near Edinburgh, witK 
his father, whence he went to his uncle, Louis 
XVIII., at Blankenburgh, and followed him to 
Mittau. He was not remarkable for wit or elegance, 
but he had solid qualities — great courage, good 
sense, loyalty, and religious sentiments. He under- 
stood and admired the virtues of his betrothed. 
Concerning him, Count d'Avaray wrote in June, 
1799: "Our young Prince daily acquires more of 
that deportment and dignity which he lacked." The 
marriage, for which the preparations were nearly 
concluded, was to be like a rainbow to the little 
court of Mittau, making its appearance after a suc- 
cession of storms. 



VIII 



THE MAEEIAGE 



THE daughter of Louis XVI. arrived at Mittau 
June 4, 1799. Her marriage was celebrated 
six days later, June 10. We are indebted for the 
unpublished documents we are about to cite to the 
courtesy of M. Ernest Daudet, who is not only one 
of our best novelists, but a historian as conscientious 
as he is remarkable. He has composed an important 
work on the Bourbons and Russia during the emigra- 
tion, and has selected in the imperial archives of 
Saint Petersburg and Moscow the documents he has 
kindly communicated to us. 

Two days after her arrival, Marie Thdr^se wrote 
the following letter to the Emperor Paul : " Mittau, 
June 6, 1799. Sire, at the court of Vienna and 
before myself becoming the object of the sentiments 
of Your Imperial Majesty, my heart shared all the 
obligations owed by the King, my uncle, and a part 
of my family to your kindness, as well as the eternal 
gratitude due to you by so many titles. On enter- 
ing your dominions and finding such proofs of your 
interest in me, my heart feels the need of expressing 
to Your Majesty the sentiments which inspire it. 

223 



224 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

It is to you that my relatives owe a royal shelter, a 
noble and active interest in their fate, and efBca- 
cious alleviations of their griefs. If I, on rejoining 
my family, am about to accomplish the sacred will 
of the authors of my being, this again is a benefit 
due to our magnanimous protector. Such are at 
once the motives and the guarantees of the entire 
confidence and lively gratitude I have vowed to 
Your Majesty, whom I entreat to accept this expres- 
sion of them. With the profoundest respect for your 
Imperial Majesty, I am your most affectionate sister 
and cousin." 

Sixteen years before, the Grand Duke Paul, heir- 
apparent of Russia, travelling in France under the 
name of Count du Nord, had regretfully left the 
court of Versailles, where he had received a most 
delightful hospitality. He had been struck by the 
pretty ways of the future Duchess of Angouleme, 
then in her fourth year, and at the moment of part- 
ing she had said to him: "I will go to see you." 
What terrible events had brought about the fulfil- 
ment of this promise ! 

Louis XVIII. 's protestations of gratitude to the 
Czar bordered on humility. He wrote to him on 
May 18 : " Monsieur my Brother and Cousin, I can- 
not see the moment approaching when the marriage 
of my nephew with my niece will be celebrated, 
without again reminding myself that it is wholly 
to your Imperial Majesty that I owe this greatly 
desired event. My lively gratitude inspires me to 



THE MARRIAGE 225 



endeavor to preserve the souvenir of it for posterity 
by praying Your Imperial Majesty to allow the act 
which is about to unite my children to be deposited 
in the archives of this Empire, in any place Your 
Imperial Majesty may be pleased to indicate, in 
order to serve as an eternal testimony of the gen- 
erous hospitality and constant support which my 
family and I have received from Your Imperial 
Majesty in our afflictions. I hope that Your Majesty 
will be so good as to acquaint me with your inten- 
tions in this respect. I desire extremely, moreover, 
that the signature of Your Imperial Majesty should 
imprint the seal of good fortune upon this act; but 
the dread of being indiscreet causes me to abstain 
from preferring a formal request, although the grant- 
ing of it would greatly increase my satisfaction. I 
beg to assure Your Imperial Majesty of the vivacity 
of the sentiments with which I am, Monsieur, my 
Brother and Cousin, Your Imperial Majesty's good 
brother and cousin." 

The royal family was represented by only four 
persons at the marriage: Louis XVIII., his wife, 
the Duke of Angouleme, and Marie Th^r^se of 
France, who, when a young girl, was called Madame 
Royale. The father of the Duke of Angouleme, the 
Count of Artois (the future Charles X.), who as 
the brother of Louis XVIII. was styled Monsieur, 
had been unable to come to Mittau on account of 
his anxiety to remain near France, where the royal- 
ists were then deluding themselves with the idea 



226 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

that coming events would prove favorable to their 
cause. The Countess of Artois, his wife, was pre- 
vented from going to Russia by the state of her 
health. The young Duke of Berry, younger brother 
of the Duke of AngoulSme, was marching under 
the banners of Cond^, then crossing Europe with a 
Russian army to fight against the troops of France. 
The Count of Artois had given his consent to his 
son's marriage with the daughter of Louis XVI. 
more than three years before. It was expressed in 
the following letter, dated at Edinburgh, April 20, 
1796, and addressed by the future Charles X. to his 
brother, Louis XVIII. : " Sire, my Brother and Lord, 
I entreat Your Majesty to receive kindly the hom- 
age of my lively and respectful gratitude for the 
consent you have been so good as to grant to the 
marriage of my eldest son, the Duke of Angouleme, 
with Madame Th^r^se, daughter of the late King 
our brother, and for all the pains you have taken 
with a view to form and hasten a union so suitable 
in all respects and so calculated to assure the happi- 
ness of the two spouses. My entire confidence in 
Your Majesty is a sentiment dictated by my heart as 
well as by my duty. Hence I dare entreat you to 
allow me to leave entirely to your affection for me 
and for the young couple the care of fixing the place 
and epoch of the marriage and regulating all its 
conditions. Your Majesty's service obliging me to 
remain at a distance from you for the time, I beg 
you to approve of my binding myself by letter to 



THE MARRIAGE 227 



ratify beforehand all that Your Majesty may think 
it right to regulate and arrange for this marriage, 
and to ratify it afterwards by my signature. Heaven 
will bless a union consecrated by our misfortunes, 
and the family of which Your Majesty is the head 
will receive the only consolation of which it is 
susceptible. Nothing remains except to entreat 
Your Majesty to deign to consider the young 
spouses as your own children, and to believe that 
every faculty of my heart and soul will be hereafter 
at your service even unto death. With the pro- 
foundest respect, I am. Sire, my brother and lord, 
of Your Majesty the very humble, very obedient, 
and very affectionate brother, subject, and servant, 
— Chaeles-Philippe. " 

The papal dispensation necessary for a marriage 
between cousins-german had been accorded by Pius 
VI., February 3, 1796. 

The nuptial benediction was given to the youth- 
ful pair, June 19, 1799, in one of the galleries of 
the palace of Mittau, by Cardinal Montmorency- 
Laval, Grand-Almoner of France. An altar had 
been arranged in the gallery adorned by green 
boughs and lilacs interwoven with lilies and roses. 
The nobility of Courland, the Roman Catholic 
clergy of Mittau, and the principal inhabitants of 
the town were present at the ceremony, as well as 
M. de Driensen, the civil governor, M. de Fersen, 
the military governor, the Greek Catholic priest, and 
the Lutheran minister. Louis XVIII. , escorted by 



228 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

his body-guards and his entire court, gave his niece 
his arm. Near the prie-dieu of the Princess stood 
the Abb^ Edgeworth of Firmont, Louis XVI. 's con- 
fessor. The graceful and touching beauty of the 
bride, the memory of her father, her mother, and her 
aunt — the presence of the priest who had said at 
the foot of the scaffold of January 21 : " Son of Saint 
Louis, ascend to heaven!" — the emotion of the 
exiled King, the tears of the courtiers of misfortune, 
all contributed to give the ceremony a grandiose and 
pathetic character. 

The marriage certificate began thus: "Year one 
thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the nine- 
teenth day of the month of June, answering to the 
thirtieth of the month of May of the style followed 
in the Russian Empire. We, Louis Joseph de 
Montmorency-Laval, first Christian Baron, Cardinal- 
Priest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Bishop 
of Metz, Prince of the Holy Empire, Commendatory 
Abbot of the Abbeys of Saint Lucien of Beauvais, 
Grand-Almoner of France, Commander of the Order 
of the Holy Ghost, etc., etc. By the authority of a 
brief from our Holy Father the Pope granting a dis- 
pensation from the impediment of consanguinity, 
the said brief recognized as authentic and visaed by 
the Very Reverend Francis Xavier Goldberger, 
provost of the Cathedral of Livonia, Vicar of the 
Spirituality and of Canon Law for Livonia and 
Courland, and pastor of the Catholic parish of 
Mittau . . . also by the express consent of the afore- 



THE MARRIAGE 229 



said Very Reverend Francis Xavier Goldberger, by 
which he authorizes us to proceed to the celebration 
of the said marriage in one of the halls of the pal- 
ace situated in the said Catholic parish of Mittau, 
arranged for the purpose, and to bless it in the form 
prescribed by the Church ; we, in the aforesaid hall, 
and after the betrothal there celebrated, have re- 
ceived the mutual consent of the high contracting 
parties, and have given them the nuptial benediction 
with the ceremonies prescribed by Holy Church. 
Present and consenting, the very high, very powerful, 
and very excellent prince His Majesty the King, 
in his said high quality as well as in that of lawful 
guardian of the bride, and commissioned by an act 
under his privy seal to declare the consent of the very 
high and very powerful Prince Monseigneur Charles 
Philippe of France, Son of France, Monsieur, brother 
of the King, father of the bridegroom, which consent 
the copy signed by M. the Count of Saint-Priest, 
Minister and Secretary of State, and sealed with his 
seal, remains annexed to the present act; and also 
to declare the consent of Madame Marie Therese of 
Savoy, Madame, his mother, of which consent His 
Majesty and the two spouses have perfect cogni- 
zance. Present and consenting also, the very high, 
very powerful, and very excellent princess Her 
Majesty the Queen." 

Louis XVIII. signed, Louis; the Queen, Marie 
Josephine Louise; the Duke of Angouleme, Louis 
Antoine ; the Duchess of Angouleme, Marie Therese 



2^0 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

Charlotte. The certificate was also signed by the 
witnesses, who were: Louis de Rosset de Fleury, 
duke and peer of France, colonel of dragoons and 
first gentleman of the King's bedchamber; Louis 
d'Aumont, Duke of Villequier, first gentleman of 
the King's bedchamber, lieutenant-general of the 
armies of His Majesty; Fran9ois de Guignard, 
Count of Saint-Priest, lieutenant-general of the 
King's armies, minister and secretary of State; 
Louis, Count of Mailly, Marquis of Nesle, first 
equerry to Her Majesty the Queen, marshal of the 
camp and armies of the King; Fran9ois de Coss^- 
Brissac, Count of Cosse, marshal of the camps and 
armies of the King, captain-colonel of the Hundred- 
Switzers of His Majesty's Guard; Antoine de Gra- 
mont, Duke of Guiche, marshal of the camps and 
armies of the King, captain of the first and most 
ancient French company of the King's body-guards ; 
Antoine de B^ziade, Count of Avaray, marshal of 
the camps and armies of the King, and captain of 
the Scotch company of his guards; Henri Essex 
Edgeworth of Firmont, priest and vicar-general of 
the diocese of Paris, almoner and confessor to the 
King; the Abbe Marie, priest of the house and 
society of Sorbonne, former under-preceptor of the 
children of the Count of Artois, and appointed first 
almoner of Their Royal Highnesses. It was signed 
also by Cardinal de Montmorency- Laval and the 
pastor of the Catholic parish of Mittau. 

The marriage was followed by a dinner at which 



THE MARRIAGE 231 



the most notable persons of the court were present, 
and also M. Guilhermy, deputy of the third estate 
to the States-General of 1789. Louis XVIII. said 
with emotion to the guests : " This is the fHe of the 
French people; my happiness would be complete if 
I could have assembled here all those who signalized 
themselves like you by courageous fidelity to the 
King my brother." On the same day he addressed 
the subjoined letter to the Czar: "Mittau, June 
10, 1799. Monsieur my Brother and Cousin, the 
generous exertions of Your Imperial Majesty have 
had their effect: my children were united this morn- 
ing, and my gratitude equals my joy as I hasten to 
announce this news to Your Imperial Majesty, and 
to ask that your goodness may continue to be 
extended to a pair who will owe all their happiness 
to you. I take the liberty of enclosing a letter from 
my nephew ; the sentiments he expresses in it can- 
not be unknown to the great soul of Your Imperial 
Majesty, and with all my heart I add my prayers to 
his." 

Louis XVIII. wrote again to the Emperor Paul, 
June 13: "Monsieur my Brother and Cousin, I have 
received, almost at the same time, two letters from 
Your Imperial Majesty, of the 2d and the 7th of 
this month, and I am extremely touched by what 
you so kindly say concerning the family reunion 
and the marriage of my children. This event could 
not have taken place under happier auspices, since 
it is under those of Your Imperial Majesty, in your 



232 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

dominions, and by your generous assistance that so 
desired a union has at last been celebrated, and 
your victories have adorned the fete. I have exe- 
cuted Your Majesty's commission to the Queen. 
Penetrated as she must be by the friendship of which 
Your Imperial Majesty has shown us so many proofs, 
she nevertheless fears to render herself importunate 
by expressing the sentiments that fill her heart, 
and I have undertaken to be the spokesman of her 
gratitude." A King of France and Navarre who 
avows that the Queen his wife fears to be indiscreet 
in writing a letter of grateful acknowledgment, 
certainly does not employ the language of pride. 

The Emperor Paul I. signed the marriage certifi- 
cate and ordered it to be deposited in the archives of 
the Russian Senate. Chateaubriand has said : " Thus 
in a foreign land and amid foreign religions was 
performed a marriage one of whose witnesses was 
the foreign priest who attended Louis XVI. to the 
scaffold; a foreign senate received the certificate of 
celebration. There was no longer any room for the 
marriage contract of the daughter of Louis XVI. in 
that treasur}^ of charters where that between Anne 
of Russia and Henri I. of France had been depos- 
ited." 

On the wedding day, Louis XVIII. wrote a letter 
to the Prince of Cond^, beginning thus: "At last, 
my dear Cousin, one of my most ardent wishes is 
accomplished, my children are united. I find in 
my niece, with an emotion more readily felt than 



THE MABBIAGE 233 



expressed, the blended traits of the unhappy authors 
of her existence. This resemblance, at once so 
sweet and so heart-rending, makes her dearer to me 
and should redouble the interest she so well deserves 
to inspire for her own sake in all Frenchmen. The 
marriage was celebrated this morning. I hasten to 
apprise you of it, being certain that you will share 
my joy." 

The army of Condd, in which the Duke of Berry 
was then serving, had arrived at Friedek in Aus- 
trian Silesia when this letter from Louis XVIII. 
reached the Prince. He communicated the follow- 
ing passage of it to the troops: "Announce this 
happy news to the army. It cannot but seem a good 
omen to your brave companions at the time when, 
following in your traces, they are about to re-enter 
the career they have so gloriously pursued. Add 
from me that I begin to regain happiness, but that 
it will not be complete until the day when I shall 
be able to rejoin them at the post where honor 
calls me." 

Finally, Louis XVIII. addressed a circular con- 
cerning the marriage of the Duke of Angouleme to 
his agents and diplomatic envoys, in which he said : 
"This alliance overwhelms me with joy; but what- 
ever personal happiness it may promise me, I rejoice 
far less on my own account than on that of my 
faithful subjects. They will see with emotion the 
sole offspring of the martyr-King, whom we deplore, 
fixed permanently near the throne. And for my 
part, when death shall prevent my laboring further 



234 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULME 

for their welfare, I shall at least have given them a 
mother who can never forget her own misfortunes 
save in rendering her children happy, and on whom 
Providence has bestowed all the virtues and quali- 
ties necessary to success." 

In spite of the splendor with which the little 
court of Mittau tried to surround the marriage of a 
daughter and a grandson of France, poverty — for 
in reality they had nothing to live on but the alms 
of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Spain — 
prevented the young married pair from receiving or 
offering rich presents. The Countess of Artois sent 
her new daughter-in-law a dressing-case. At the 
time of her departure from Vienna the young Prin- 
cess had received from the Empress a portrait of the 
latter, set in diamonds. The Archduke Albert 
offered her two work-tables with ten thousand florins 
in one of the drawers. "Whatever desire she may 
have felt to do so, the daughter of Louis XVI. could 
distribute no presents, because she had no fortune, 
and her marriage contract contained nothing but 
hopes. Nevertheless, she gave to the Countess of 
Chanclos, who had been grand-mistress of her house- 
hold at Vienna, a medallion worth four thousand 
florins, and to Mademoiselle de Chanclos, her niece, 
an aigrette of diamonds. Mgr. de La Fare, Bishop 
of Nancy, who represented Louis XVIII. at Vienna 
Gater on he was Archbishop of Sens, cardinal, duke, 
and peer, and first-almoner to the Dauphiness) 
received a charming miniature of the young Prin- 
cess. This miniature, painted at Vienna by Fuger, 



THE MARBIAGE 235 



belongs at present to the Viscountess of Jauz^e, born 
Choiseul-Gouflfier, a woman distinguished by her wit 
and talents. The orphan of the Temple is repre- 
sented in a very simple costume; a black robe, a 
fichu of white muslin, and a knot of black taffeta on 
her head; a medallion containing two miniature 
portraits of the martyi'ed King and Queen hangs on 
the breast from a chain passing round her neck. The 
young Princess, in all the freshness of her twenty 
years, has features of an exquisite delicacy, very 
clear blue eyes, extremely fair hair, a brilliant color, 
a small and pleasing mouth, an infinitely gentle 
smile, and a simple, affecting expression. The 
Duchess of Angouleme was not pretty very long, but 
at the time of her marriage she was ravishing. 

It is curious, but there are women whom history 
represents as always young, others who are always 
old. If one names Gabrielle d'Estr^es for example, 
or Mademoiselle de La Valliere, or Madame de Mon- 
tespan, the image of a brilliant beauty is evoked. 
But if Madame de Maintenon is mentioned, one usu- 
ally thinks of an old and awkward woman ; the siren 
who made so many conquests in her youth is for- 
gotten. In general, when reflecting on the Duchess 
of Angouleme, one imagines her with a gloomy 
countenance and features hardened by age; the 
period when her young and melancholy beauty had 
such a poetic charm that even the most ardent repub- 
licans could not behold her without a mixture of 
tenderness, sympathy, and admiration, is too seldom 
thought of. 



IX 



THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAF 

IF the daughter of Louis XVI. had married a 
foreign prince, the crown of France would have 
lost its purest gem. The Duchess of Angouleme 
rendered the court in exile more moral, graver, and 
more religious than it had been. No one forgot 
himself when speaking in the presence of a woman 
at once so young and so virtuous. To see her was 
to be edified. The court of Mittau was as serious 
as that of Coblentz had been frivolous. Who would 
have dared utter a scandalous word before the 
orphan of the Temple ? It would have been unwise 
for the Voltairians to risk an impious allusion in 
her presence. In her the double majesty of virtue 
and misfortune was still stronger than that of birth 
and rank. Whether Frenchmen or foreigners, all 
who had the honor of approaching her experienced a 
sentiment of profound veneration. She considered 
herself destined by Providence to preserve the mem- 
ory of her parents, the martyred King and Queen, 
and every one respected this vocation, or, say rather, 
this cult. Charitable and Christian, the Duchess of 
Angouleme bore ill-will to nobody, but she gave her 

236 



THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 237 

confidence and friendship only to those whom she 
thought worthy of her esteem. Immoral persons, 
whatever their wit, social position, or brilliant qual- 
ities, had no standing with her. She liked nothing 
but what was honest and loyal. In her opinion, 
politics should be based on right, justice, and 
morality. 

The Count of Saint-Priest wrote to M. de La 
Fare, June 27, 1799: "The young family continues 
to get along marvellously well ; we need only hope 
to soon see the fruits of it. Mademoiselle de Choisy 
is very well treated by the King and others; she 
seems content with Mademoiselle de S^rent, her 
companion, and with the latter's mother; the father 
will soon arrive." 

While at Vienna, Marie Th^rese had singled out 
Mademoiselle Henriette de Choisy among all the 
female SmigrSs residing in that city. She was the 
daughter of that heroic Marquis of Choisy who 
seized Cracow in the night of February 2, 1772, 
with twelve hundred patriotic Poles and twenty-five 
French noblemen, and held it through a siege of 
several weeks against eighteen thousand Russians. 
His two sons were serving in Condi's army. "It 
would be hard to find a more virtuous, more 
esteemed, or more meritorious family," wrote Mgr. 
de La Fare. Marie Th^r^se brought Mademoiselle 
de Choisy from Vienna to Mittau as a maid of 
honor. Madame and Mademoiselle de S^rent, who 
were likewise with her at Mittau, were the wife and 



238 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

daughter of the Duke of Sdrent, one of the most 
faithful adherents of royalty. The Countess of La 
Tour d'Auvergne, the Duke of S^rent, and the 
Marquis of Nesle also formed part of the Duchess of 
AngoulSme's household. 

At the close of the year 1799, the court of Mittau 
received a visitor who could not fail to impress 
painfully the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette. It was the Abbd Georgel, the grand- 
vicar, confidant, right-hand-man of the sorry hero 
of the necklace affair, Cardinal de Rohan, who had 
been so fatal to the unfortunate Queen. During the 
Cardinal's imprisonment in the Bastille, the Abb^ 
Georgel, acting as grand-vicar of the grand-almonry 
of France, had thought it his duty to quote, in the 
regulations for Lent of 1786, the epistle in which 
the captive Saint Paul exhorts his disciple Timothy 
not to be ashamed of his prison, and to break the 
bread of the Lord in his name to the faithful. 
These regulations, posted up at the doors and sac- 
risties of the palace chapel at Versailles, had given 
scandal. It was claimed that in comparing the 
prisoner of the Bastille to Saint Paul, Cardinal de 
Rohan's grand-vicar had implicitly compared Louis 
XVI. to Nero, and he was banished to the provinces. 

The Abb^ Georgel was in Fribourg with other 
Smigris in 1799, when the chapters of the grand- 
priories of Bohemia, Bavaria, and Germany ap- 
pointed deputies to go to Saint Petersburg and 
offer the homage of their obedience to the new 



THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 239 

grand-master of the Order of Malta, the Emperor 
Paul I. The Abb^ Georgel was a member of this 
deputation, and passed through Mittau on his way 
to Saint Petersburg. He thus describes in his Me- 
moirs the reception he met from Louis XVIII. : — 

" After Mass the King received the deputation in 
the audience chamber; he was surrounded by the 
notabilities of his court; his face announced the 
tranquillity of his soul; his conversation was inter- 
esting by reason of the kind and amiable things he 
said to the deputies about their families and their 
mission. Louis XVIII. had a good deal of knowl- 
edge and intelligence ; misfortune, which is a great 
lesson, especially for sovereigns, had removed the 
varnish of pedantry which people criticised at Ver- 
sailles. He was simply dressed in a blue coat and 
red collar, the modest and prescribed uniform of his 
entire court, in order to save expense. His Majesty 
had the extreme kindness to remember having seen 
me at Versailles. After the King's audience we 
repaired to that of the Queen. On leaving her 
apartment we were conducted to those of the Duke 
and Duchess of AngoulSme." 

The daughter of Marie Antoinette could not see 
without distress a priest who recalled such painful 
memories. The Abb^ Georgel shall describe the 
meeting. "The countenance of the Duchess," he 
says, "seemed to us full of majesty and grace; on 
seeing her my heart experienced a respectful emo- 
tion. . . . But I must own that when the Duke of 



240 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL&ME 

S^rent named me to this august Princess, I per- 
ceived a trouble which perceptibly altered her 
expression. I was struck with it ; the presentation 
was shortened; in reflecting on it, I thought that 
my presence must have recalled a trial in which I 
had been an actor, the successful issue of which for 
the illustrious accused had so strongly affected the 
Queen her mother, that, considering herself offended, 
she had induced the King to become the accuser. 
If I could have foreseen this, I would have absented 
myself from the presentation through respect." 

However, the court of Mittau continued to enjoy 
comparative tranquillity. The lords and ladies who 
composed it were found in food and firing by the 
King, or, to speak more exactly, by the Czar, and 
received an annual salary of one hundred louis. 
They dined at four o'clock with the King and 
Queen and the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme. 
The court appointments were held by the Duke of 
Aumont, the Prince of Pienne, the Duke of Fleury, 
the Count of Avaray, the Marquis of Jaucourt, the 
Count of Cossd-Brissac, the Count of La Chapelle, 
the Duke of Guiche, and the Count of Saint-Priest. 
Lack of money was what the court of Mittau chiefly 
suffered from. Every one felt that a situation in 
which all depended on the caprice of foreign sover- 
eigns was extremely precarious. Paul I. gave Louis 
XVIII. an annual pension of two hundred thousand 
roubles, which he increased by one hundred and 
twenty thousand livres after the arrival of the 



THE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 241 

Queen and Marie Th^r^se. The King of Spain 
gave eighty-four thousand livres a year, but with a 
very bad grace. Concerning this, Louis XVIII. 
wrote : " I own that I have never suffered more from 
my poverty; if I consulted my own judgment, I 
would send my cousin and all his reals to the 
devil." And in a letter of August 25, 1799, the 
Count of Saint-Priest said to Mgr. de La Fare; 
" The King does not blame you for having received 
letters from Their Catholic Majesties addressed to 
the Count of Provence''^ (in order not to embroil 
themselves with the French Republic, the Spanish 
Bourbons gave no other title to Louis XVIIL). 
"His Majesty, though much dissatisfied with such 
an address, cannot refuse the letters, his situation 
forcing him to receive the very meagre subsidies of 
the King his cousin, who declines very flatly to 
augment them. The Queen no longer writes to 
him." 

The Duchess of Angouleme, who had the keenest 
sense of her family dignity and renown, suffered 
greatly from this state of affairs. To this grief was 
added that of seeing her husband depart for the pur- 
pose of rejoining the Duke of Berry in Condi's 
army. Before leaving Mittau the Duke of Angou- 
leme wrote this letter to the Czar, dated August 5, 
1800: "Sire, the moment having arrived for me to 
go whither honor, duty, and the service of the King 
my uncle call me, I hasten to lay at the feet of Your 
Imperial Majesty the homage of my lively gratitude 



242 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL:iME 

for all the favors with which you have deigned to 
overwhelm me during my sojourn in your empire. 
Forced to separate myself temporarily from the being 
who is dearest to me, I venture to take the liberty 
of recommending her to Your Imperial Majesty. I 
venture to hope that you will permit me, if circum- 
stances and my duty do not forbid, to return and 
pass the winter here with my wife. We unite in 
entreating Your Imperial Majesty to accept the 
homage of our respect and admiration and, if you 
will permit us to say so, of our attachment to your 
person, — Louis Antoine." 

Accompanied by the Count of Damas-Crux and 
the Chevalier Saint-Priest, the Duke of Angouleme 
rejoined Conde's army at Pontaba, May 25, 1800. 
Chateaubriand says : " The army received this other 
heir of Saint Louis with transport. . . . Condi's 
corps, forced to a long and retrograde march, entered 
the Austrian army in line on the banks of the Inn. 
The Duke of Berry on arriving at camp found them 
in this position. The meeting between the two 
brothers was touching. The Duke of Berry was 
serving as a simple volunteer in the noble cavalry 
regiment he had formed, and of which the Duke of 
Angouleme had taken command. Obeying his elder 
brother like the meanest soldier, he gave a new 
example of that submission rendered to each other 
by the members of the royal family in the order of 
heredity: a submission which not only displays the 
virtues natural to the Bourbons, but which still 



TEE END OF THE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 243 

preserves the throne by becoming a sort of authentic 
and perpetual confession of the principle of legiti- 
macy." (Chateaubriand wrote this ten years before 
the Revolution of 1830.) 

In 1800, before the battles of Marengo and Hohen- 
linden, Louis XVIII. deceived himself greatly con- 
cerning the chances of a restoration he thought 
imminent. He sent the Count of Saint-Priest to 
Vienna with long and detailed instructions begin- 
ning thus: "Mittau, May 26, 1800. I am so con- 
vinced that upon the recognition of my royal title by 
the belligerent Powers, on my drawing nearer to the 
frontiers of my realm, and especially on my activity, 
depends the conclusion of the most fatal revolution 
of which history offers an example, that I do not 
hesitate to deprive myself temporarily of the services 
of the Count of Saint-Priest and charge him to 
go and treat of these important points with the 
ministers of His Imperial and Royal Majesty. 
Nevertheless I should not have confided this mission 
to him if I had not wished to give more formality to 
the agreement that will result from it, by charging 
the man in whom I place most confidence to sign it 
in my name. 

" I charge M. the Count of Saint-Priest, then, to 
induce the Emperor, my nephew, to recognize me 
as King of France and Navarre, and to consent that, 
bearing this title, I shall go in person to his army 
in Italy, or, if His Imperial and Royal Majesty 
prefers, to the auxiliary corps of Piedmontese com- 



244 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUhi^ME 

manded by my brother-in-law, the Duke of Aosta, 
Let it be understood that I ask for no command. I 
desire only to be where I can rally my faithful or 
repentant subjects to my side, and combat those 
who persist in their aberration. The position of a 
volunteer in the allied army would suffice me for this 
end. I would consent, however, yielding to neces- 
sity, that my activity should be temporarily sus- 
pended, if for reasons which I cannot foresee, it is 
judged to be as yet impracticable; but then His 
Imperial Majesty, while authentically recognizing 
my royal title, should indicate a town in Piedmont, 
in the state of Genoa, or in Tuscany, where I could 
repair and hold myself in the closest possible prox- 
imity to events, remaining always at liberty to go 
towards that part of my kingdom where I should 
judge my presence to be necessary. In fine, if the 
recognition of my royal title does not take place 
immediately, the court of Vienna should at least 
promise to proclaim it in a near future to be deter- 
mined by the success of the war." 

M. de Barante, in his notice on the Count of 
Saint-Priest, has severely criticised the royal in- 
structions : " These documents are curious, " he says. 
" In them Louis XVIII. shows himself greatly con- 
cerned for his royal dignity and the honor of France. 
Certainly, these sentiments were sincere, but they 
are expressed in such a manner that they cause 
astonishment by their ignorance of France and Eu- 
rope, by their inert confidence in the force of divine 



THE END OF TEE SOJOURN AT MITTAU 245 

right, and their miserable dependence on foreign 
Powers. Hence, this royal arrogance, this patriotic 
movement, go so wide astray that they neither prove 
energy nor veritable pride. To estimate the worth 
of these instructions it suffices to add that M. de 
Saint-Priest, who carried them, reached Vienna on 
the day before the news of the battle of Marengo 
arrived. The principal request of Louis XVIII. 
was that Austria should authorize him to repair to 
her army in Italy; she had just lost all Italy." 

The loss of the battle of Marengo by the Austrians 
brought on an armistice which on different occasions 
was prolonged until October 20, 1800. Conde's 
army, stationed on the Inn, defended the passage of 
this river from Wissemburg to Neubeieren. A 
skirmish took place at Pavenheim, December 1. 
According to Chateaubriand, the Prince of Cond^ 
was obliged to use his authority to make the two 
Princes retire, as they were uselessly exposing 
themselves: a soldier close by the elder had been 
struck by a ball. The author of the Genie dii 
Christianisme adds this really singular remark: 
"Two days later, the battle of Hohenlinden was 
gained by a general^ who wanted to acquire great 
renown in order that he might lay it at the feet of 
his legitimate King." 

The check received by the Coalition had indefi- 
nitely adjourned the expectations of the court of 
Mittau. Paul I. was disgusted with his allies. He 

1 Moreau. 



246 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

would not fight against France any longer. He 
became infatuated with the First Consul, and was 
about to show himself as hostile to Louis XVIII. 
as he had at first been well disposed. The moment 
was at hand when the little court of Mittau would 
be driven out of the Russian Empire. 



THE DEPAETUEE FEOM IVnTTAU 

LOUIS XVIII. 'S cause seemed desperate. The 
First Consul was at the summit of glory. 
The continental Powers emulated each other in their 
assiduous attentions to him. The Czar's admiration 
was enthusiastic. Deceived in all his expectations, 
the heir of Louis XVI. was about to be driven out 
of Mittau like an outlaw, like a pariah, and his 
faithful attendants to be reduced to beggary. With- 
out money and shelterless, he wandered miserably 
about, living on alms, and subject to the caprices of 
his temporary hosts. After the inexpressible afflic- 
tions of captivity in the Temple, Marie Th^rese was 
to endure those of exile in their most rigorous and 
painful form. Her truly intrepid soul did not sink 
under the weight of these new trials. 

How was it that the profound sjrmpathy enter- 
tained for Louis XVIII. by the versatile Paul I. 
had been transfigured into absolute aversion ? Why 
did he regard his former enemies with affection and 
his former allies with hatred? How could he pub- 
licly drink the health of the First Consul and fill his 
apartments with portraits of the victor of Marengo ? 

247 



248 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

The chief cause of this unexpected change was the 
Czar's dissatisfaction with the conduct of his former 
allies. He attributed to them the defeat of the 
Russian army at Zurich and the capitulation of the 
Russian and English troops that had landed in 
Holland. He reproached himself for having placed 
his soldiers at the service of a coalition from which 
he got nothing but reverses in return, and he prom- 
ised himself to consult only Russian interests there- 
after. On the other hand, the glory of the young 
victor of the Pyramids had impressed his ardent 
and excitable imagination. Bonaparte, turning this 
mood very cleverly to his own advantage, found 
means to subjugate the Czar completely. There 
were six or seven thousand Russian prisoners in 
France whom it had been impossible to exchange, 
as Russia had no French prisoners. The First Con- 
sul caused these Russians to be armed and uniformed 
in their sovereign's colors. He returned their 
officers, their weapons, and their flags, and sent 
them back to their Emperor without conditions. 
He added that this was a mark of consideration on 
his part for the Russian army, which the French had 
learned to know and respect on the field of battle. 

Another of Bonaparte's proceedings with regard 
to the Emperor Paul was a real stroke of genius. 
Knowing that the island of Malta, an ephemeral 
conquest to France, could not hold out long against 
the British fleets, and that, being strictly blockaded, 
it would be obliged to surrender to the English 



THE BEPABTUBE FROM MITTAU 249 

through lack of provisions, he took the notion of 
giving it to the Czar. Such a present went straight 
to the heart of a sovereign who valued his title as 
Grand-Master of the Order of Malta as highly as 
his title of Emperor of all the Russias. Over- 
whelmed with joy, Paul I. ordered a Finnish officer, 
M. de Sprengporten, to place himself at the head of 
the Russian prisoners in France, and go with them 
to take possession of the island of Malta from the 
hands of the French. But while all this was going 
on, the English seized the island. The Czar 
demanded its restitution. They refused it. The 
irascible Emperor avenged himself by laying an 
embargo on English vessels, three hundred of which 
were seized at one time in the ports of his Empire, 
and by causing a declaration to be signed, December 
26, 1800, by Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, in 
which the three Powers bound themselves to main- 
tain the principle of the rights of neutrals against 
England, even by force of arms. 

Having become the ally of Bonaparte and the 
adversary of England and Austria, Paul I. troubled 
himself no further about the Bourbons. The Prince 
whom he but lately styled his august senior now 
seemed merely an importunate and inconvenient 
guest. The First Consul did not need to ask the 
Czar to banish him. The Emperor Paul volun-. 
tarily expelled him and treated him most severely. 
Bonaparte did not require so much. Possibly he 
would, even have preferred, that Louis XVIII. should 



250 TBE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

remain in Russia than to have him in close proxim- 
ity to France. But Paul I. would hear nothing 
further of the Pretender who stood in the way of his 
new policy, and whose support at Mittau seemed to 
him a useless expense. Acting violently, according 
to his habit, he had the order of expulsion made 
known to him with a rudeness that approached bru- 
tality. He began by banishing Louis XVIII. 's 
representative, M. de Caraman, from Saint Peters- 
burg, where he had been received in the most cordial 
manner, but whence he was brusquely expelled 
without the least excuse or explanation. 

M. de Caraman arrived unexpectedly at Mittau, 
having had no time to forewarn Louis XVIII. of the 
changes that had been effected at Saint Petersburg. 
He has recounted the details of the expulsion of the 
Pretender and the Duchess of Angouleme in some 
curious unpublished Memoirs now in possession of 
the present Duke of Caraman. 

On January 20, 1801, the eve of the anniversary 
of Louis XVI. 's death, the daughter of the martyr- 
King was in her oratory, preparing to make her 
communion on the following day in memory of her 
father. Suddenly General Driesen, the military 
governor of Mittau, presented himself before Louis 
XVIII. and announced that his pension was with- 
drawn and that he must instantly leave the Russian 
Empire. The passports with which he was fur- 
nished did not even style him the Count of Pro- 
vence. He was called the Count of Lille and 
treated as a private person. 



THE DEPARTURE FROM MITTAU 251 

The Pretender received the Russian general 
calmly. "Being at Mittau through the generosity 
of the Emperor," said he, "I am ready to depart as 
soon as his sentiments change toward me." Then, 
as if struck by a painful memory, he reminded the 
general of the day of the month, saying that the 
morrow was the anniversary of the martyrdom of 
King Louis XVI., his brother, and that when this 
period arrived, the Duchess of Angouleme remained 
shut up in her apartments, devoting herself to re- 
ligious duties whose only witness was the Abb^ 
Edgeworth of Firmont, her father's confessor, who 
had accompanied him on the scaffold. 

"Louis XVIIL," adds M. de Caraman, "asked 
General Driesen if it was necessary to deprive his 
august and unfortunate niece, whom he called his 
daughter, of her last remaining consolation by tear- 
ing her from her pious occupations. The general, 
greatly moved by such a scene, bowed without ven- 
turing to reply, and went away, leaving the King a 
prey to the anxiety caused by the duties he had to 
fulfil." 

Summoning all his courage, the Pretender went 
to the apartments of his niece and apprised her of 
the Emperor Paul's determination. The Princess, 
without seeming disturbed, asked if the orders were 
so rigorous as to demand the sacrifice of the two 
. days devoted to her father's memory. Louis XVIIL 
replied that they would not start until January 22, 
and the daughter of Louis XVI. returned to her 
prayers. 



252 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 



As soon as the news of the expulsion was made 
known, the Pretender's attendants gave way to 
despair. What was to become of the veterans who 
acted as his body-guards? On learning that they 
were not to follow their master, they could not 
restrain tlieir tears. The anniversary of the execu- 
tion of Louis XVI. was spent in sorrowful medita- 
tions. The departure took place January 22. The 
King and his niece had been authorized to take only 
six persons with them. Those who were left behind 
were in great distress. The fugitive sovereign 
wished to bid them adieu, but his voice was stifled 
by sobs. 

Two carriages were awaiting the Pretender and 
his niece. They set off toward the Russian frontier, 
accompanied by the Count of Avaray, the Abb6 
Edgeworth of Firmont, the Duchess of S^rent, the 
Viscount of Hardouineau, and two domestics. It 
was bitter cold, and it was necessary to cross the 
wide Lithuanian plains, covered with ice and snow. 
The first day, after travelling eight leagues, the 
fugitives found hospitality with a Courland noble- 
man, the Baron of Koyt. At Frauenburg, on the 
following day, they were obliged to take shelter in 
a tavern thronged by drunken peasants. The third 
da}'- was terrible. A bitter storm was raging. A 
furious wind, driving clouds of snow before it, 
frightened the horses and blinded the drivers. Louis 
XVIII. and his niece were obliged to alight and 
painfully make their way through snow nearly a foot 



THE BEPABTURE FROM MITTAU 253 

deep. This was the scene that furnished the sub- 
ject of an engraving clandestinely distributed in 
Paris, representing the Duchess of Angouleme con- 
ducting Louis XVIII., who was leaning on her arm, 
across the snows of Lithuania, with this motto under- 
neath: "The French Antigone." In the evening 
the fugitives slept at an inn still more wretched 
than that of the previous night. The next day they 
were hospitably received by a compassionate Cour- 
land nobleman, the Baron of Jatz. At last, after 
five days of fatiguing and painful travel, they arrived 
at Memel, a fortified town of Eastern Prussia, where 
they rested for several days. 



XI 

THE SOJOUEK IN PBUSSIA AND POLAND 

LOUIS XVIII. had not had time to provide 
himself in advance with a refuge before leav- 
ing Mittau. He had turned at all risks toward the 
nearest kingdom without knowing whether he would 
be received. He was doubtful of the sentiments of 
the Prussian court, which was then on excellent 
terms with the First Consul, and consequently 
expected a very bad reception. On approaching 
Prussian territory he had taken off all his decora- 
tions and commanded his suite to do the same. He 
was travelling incognito as the Count of Lille ; the 
Duchess of Angouleme passed as the Marchioness of 
La Meilleraye. The Queen was at this period at 
the baths of Pyrmont in the principality of Waldeck. 
At the time when Louis XVIII. arrived at 
Memel, he was expected by no one, and the Prus- 
sian government had given no orders to receive him. 
At Mittau the Pretender bore a royal title and lived 
in a palace, with body-guards and the paraphernalia 
of sovereignty. At Memel he was only a proscribed 
person, hiding his royal dignity under a false name, 
and dwelling in a private house. "This is the 
254 



THE SOJOURN JN PBUSSIA AND POLAND 255 

fourth time," said the Count of Avaray, "that we 
have not had wherewithal to live on for two months. 
Providence has come to our aid, and I have the same 
confidence ; it will not abandon our master and his 
admirable niece. She is an angel whom heaven has 
left him for his consolation. . . . Ah! how well 
the daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette 
has profited by the lessons and examples of her 
childhood!" 

Louis XVIII. had intended to leave Memel for 
Koenigsberg on February 9, 1801. He delayed his 
departure for several days, because several of his 
body-guards arrived from Mittau in the evening of 
February 8. They said they had been ordered to 
quit that town within twenty-four hours, and that 
they would be followed by their comrades, driven 
out of the Russian Empire like malefactors. These 
unfortunates, who were nearly all aged and infirm, 
were reduced to poverty. The Pretender said to 
them : " Gentlemen, it gives me great consolation to 
see you, but it is mingled with very bitter sorrow. 
Providence has tried me long and in many ways, 
and this is not the least cruel of them. Look," he 
added, pointing to his left breast, despoiled of his 
crosses, "I cannot even wear a decoration." 

On the following days the other body-guards were 
presented to Louis XVIII. in the order of their 
arrival. One of them, M. de Montlezun, could not 
refrain from tears. "My friend," said the Prince, 
taking him by the hand, "when one's heart is pure, 



256 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

it is at the last extremity of adversity that a French- 
man should redouble his courage." Then, turning 
to the others: "Yes, gentlemen, if my courage 
should abandon me, it is among you that I should 
seek it and renew my vigor." 

The Count of Hautefort has written in his jour- 
nal: "The Kingr did not limit his concern for his 
body-guards to words only. He gave them a sum 
which in his situation was considerable. The 
Duchess of Angouleme also sent one hundred ducats 
to the Viscount of Agoult, to be divided between 
those who were most in need ; she especially desired 
that her name should not be mentioned; but who 
could mistake the source of such a benefit? The 
Viscount of Agoult chartered a vessel and presided 
over the embarkation of his wretched companions. 
The King's finances being exhausted by the exor- 
bitant daily expenses, the Duchess of Angouleme 
proposed to His Majesty to sell her diamonds, an 
offer which was accepted with regret; but cir- 
cumstances hardly permitted a refusal. The Prin- 
cess expressly authorized the Duchess of Serent to 
make the sale "in order to assist my uncle, his 
faithful servitors, and myself in our common dis- 
tress." The diamonds were deposited with the 
Danish Consul, who advanced two hundred thou- 
sand ducats on the price of the sale. 

February 23, Louis XVIII. and his niece, fol- 
lowed by their fugitive little court, left Memel for 
Koenigsberg, where they arrived the next day 



THE SOJOURN IN PEUSSIA AND POLAND 257 

There they learned that the King of Prussia con- 
sented to assign them a residence in Warsaw, but 
under the express conditions that the Pretender's 
suite should be still further reduced, and that he 
should not assume the royal title, but simply bear 
the name of the Count of Lille. The Duchess of 
Angouleme had written a touching letter to the 
Queen of Prussia, in which she said, speaking of her 
uncle: "There is more than one voice that cries to 
me from heaven that he is all for me, that he takes 
the place of all I have lost, and that I ought never 
to abandon him. Therefore I will be faithful to 
him, and death alone shall separate us." 

The fugitives took up their route for Warsaw, 
February 27. While on the way, March 2, Louis 
XVIII. 's carriage was overset in a ditch while 
trying to get out of the way of that of a Polish lady 
whom they met. The shock was violent, and the 
Duchess of Angouleme, in falling, broke one of the 
carriage windows by striking her head against it. 
On March 6 they reached Warsaw and took up 
their abode in the Vassiliovitch house, situated in 
the Cracow faubourg. 

The Pretender's cause seemed compromised more 
and more. The treaty of Luneville had discouraged 
the royalists. Condi's army, reduced to four or five 
thousand men, was disbanded in Croatia, near the 
Adriatic, about twenty leagues from the Turkish 
frontiers. "We were very far from our country," 
says the Count of Puymaigre, " when we were forced 



258 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

to lay down our arms and abandon all illusions 
concerning the result of that great struggle between 
France and Europe which, with such different vicis- 
situdes, had lasted for nine years. We had learned 
to comprehend, through long and cruel experience, 
how greatly the French Princes erred when they 
set up their standards in foreign lands ; and although 
it cannot be denied that we had fought with a cer- 
tain glory, and that the republicans, whose opinions 
on this head cannot be rejected, have rendered us 
entire justice, still it was a barren glory." 

The Duke of Angouleme, who had distinguished 
himself in Condi's army, rejoined his wife at War- 
saw, March 25, 1801. A few days later, it became 
known that the Emperor Paul I. had been assassin- 
ated in the night of March 23-24. The new Czar, 
Alexander I., showed sympathy for Louis XVIII., 
and granted him subsidies. He even proposed his 
return to Mittau. The Pretender preferred to 
remain for the moment at Warsaw. His position 
there, however, was becoming difficult on account of 
the amicable relations then existing between the 
Cabinet of Berlin and the First Consul. The latter, 
intoxicated by his victories, thought he could induce 
Louis XVIII. to renounce his claims to the throne 
of France in consideration of some pecuniary or ter- 
ritorial indemnity. In accord with the Prussian 
government, he caused him to be sounded on the 
subject by M. Meyer, president of the regency of 
Warsaw. The Pretender, having the Duchess of 



THE SOJOUBN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 259 

Angouleme on his right, received the Prussian 
negotiator with a truly royal pride. He gave his 
response in a note concerning which Chateaubriand 
has said : " This note is one of the finest documents 
of our history. While powerful monarchs were 
being forced to abandon their thrones to the con- 
queror, a proscribed King of France refused his to 
the usurper who occupied it; the Roman Senate did 
not make a more magnanimous act of ownership in 
selling the field where Hannibal was encamped." 

The declaration of Louis XVIII. was worded 
thus : " Warsaw, February 22, 1803. I do not con- 
found M. Bonaparte with those who have preceded 
him; I esteem his valor and his military talents; 
I thank him for many administrative acts, because 
the benefits conferred on my people are always 
dear to me. But he deceives himself if he thinks 
he can induce me to compromise my rights; far 
from that; he would establish them himself, if they 
could be litigated, by the application he is making 
at this moment. I do not know what are the 
designs of God concerning my race and me; but I 
do know the obligations He has imposed on me by 
the rank in which it pleased Him to give me birth. 
A Christian, I shall fulfil these obligations until my 
latest breath ; a son of Saint Louis, his example will 
teach me how to make myself respected even in 
chains; a successor of Francois I., I shall at least be 
able to say like him : We have lost all except honor. 
Signed: Louis." At the foot of this declaration 



260 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULJ^ME 

the Duke of Angouleme wrote : "With the permis- 
sion of the King, my uncle, I adhere with all my 
heart and soul to the contents of this note. Signed: 
Louis Antoine." 

The Count of Artois, the Duke of Berry, the 
Duke of Orleans and his two brothers, the Prince of 
Cond^ and the Duke of Bourbon, all exiled in 
England, sent Louis XVIII. the following adhe- 
sion, dated at Wansted House, April 23, 1803: 
"We the undersigned Princes, brother, nephews, 
and cousins of His Majesty Louis XVIII., King of 
France and Navarre, penetrated with the same sen- 
timents with which our sovereign Lord and King 
shows himself so gloriously animated in his noble 
response to the proposition made him to renounce 
the throne of France, and to require from all the 
princes of his house a renunciation of their impre- 
scriptible rights of succession to the same throne, 
declare : 

" That our attachment to our duties and our honor 
not permitting us to compromise our rights, we 
adhere with heart and soul to the response of our 
King; 

" That after his illustrious example, we will never 
lend ourselves to the slightest transaction which 
could abase the House of Bourbon and cause it to 
fail in what it owes to itself, its ancestors, and its 
descendants ; 

" And that if the unjust employment of superior 
force should succeed (which may God avert!) in 



THE SOJOURN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 261 

placing ill fact, but never by right, on tbe throne of 
France any other than our legitimate King, we will 
follow with as much confidence as fidelity the voice 
of honor which bids us appeal from it to God, to 
the French people, and to our swords." 

Bonaparte's future victim, the young Duke of 
Enghien, also sent in his adhesion, couched in these 
words: "Sire, the letter of March 5 with which 
Your Majesty has deigned to honor me, has duly 
arrived. Your Majesty knows too well the blood 
which flows in my veins to have been able to doubt 
for a moment concerning the nature of the response 
you ask for. I am a Frenchman, Sire, and a French- 
man remains faithful to his God, his King, and his 
honorable oaths. Many others will perhaps some 
day envy me this triple advantage. Deign then, 
Your Majesty, to permit me to add my signature 
to that of the Duke of Angouleme, adhering like 
him with all my heart and soul to the contents of 
the note of my King. Signed: Louis Antoine 
Henri de Bouebok. Ettenheim, March 22, 1803." 

Enthusiastic over this language, Chateaubriand 
exclaims : " What sentiments ! what a signature ! and 
what a date! When one reads at this epoch the 
history of the old France and the new, which 
existed at the same time, one knows not which to 
be the more proud of; heroic successes attend the 
new France, heroic adversities the old. Our princes 
carried away all the grandeurs of our country; they 
left nothing but victory behind them." 



262 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

It was at Ettenheim, on Marcli 25, 1803, that the 
Duke of Enghien signed his adhesion to the declara- 
tion of Louis XVIII., and it was at Ettenheim, less 
than a year later, on March 15, 1804, that he was 
arrested hy Colonel Ordener's dragoons to be taken 
to the castle of Vincennes and shot there, contrary 
to every regulation of the rights of nations, on the 
fatal night of March 20-21. As soon as she had 
been apprised of the murder, the Dachess of Angou- 
leme wrote to the Prince of Conde, the victim's 
grandfather, a letter in which she said : " Monsieur 
my Cousin, I cannot forbear to express my keen 
sympathy in the sorrow which afflicts you, and which 
I cordially and sincerely share. In spite of all I 
have suffered, I could never have imagined the 
frightful event which plunges us into mourning. 
... I am not writing to the Duke of Bourbon, 
but I pray you, be the interpreter of my sentiments ; 
rely, I entreat you, on my prayers that, sustained by 
your courage, your health may bear up under the 
sorrowful weight of our mutual and cruel loss." 

The Duke of Enghien's murder had proved how 
greatly Bonaparte feared the Bourbons, in spite of 
his immense power. One might fancy he already 
foreboded the events of 1814 and 1815. The Pre- 
tender had written him, September 7, 1800: "You 
must know, General, that you have long since 
gained my esteem. If you doubt my gratitude, 
designate your place, determine the lot of your 
friends. As to my principles, I am a Frenchman, 



THE SOJOUBN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 263 

clement by character; I would be still more so by 
reason. The victor of Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcole, 
the conqueror of Italy and Egypt, must prefer glory 
to a vain celebrity. However, you are losing pre- 
cious time ; we can assure the welfare of France ; I 
say we, because for that I have need of Bonaparte, 
and he can do nothing without me. General, Eu- 
rope has its eyes upon you; a glorious triumph 
awaits you, and I am impatient to give peace to my 
people. Signed: Louis." 

The First Consul replied: "I have received your 
letter. Monsieur, and I thank you for the flattering 
things it contains. You should not desire to return 
to France, for to do so you would have to walk over 
a hundred thousand corpses. Sacrifice your per- 
sonal interests to the repose of your country; his- 
tory will recompense you for it. I am not insensible 
to the sorrows of your family, and it would give me 
pleasure to know that you were surrounded with all 
that could contribute to the tranquillity of your 
retreat." 

Though Bonaparte might address the descendant 
of Saint Louis, Henri IV., and Louis XIV. simply 
as "Monsieur," and adopt a tone of disdainful pro- 
tection toward him, yet he was tormented by the 
existence of this discrowned monarch and dreaded 
the future reserved for this outlawed exile. 

The more improbable the chances of a restoi'ation 
became, the greater became the lofty arrogance of 
the Pretender's language and the more firmly did he 



264 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

proclaim his confidence in divine right. Learning 
that Bonaparte had received the Order of the Golden 
Fleece from the King of Spain a few days after the 
murder of the Duke of Enghien, he hastened to 
despoil himself of this order and send it back to 
Charles IV. with the following letter: "Monsieur 
my Brother, it is with regret that I return to you 
the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 
which His Majesty your father, of glorious memory, 
confided to me. There can be nothing in common 
between me and the great criminal whom audacity 
and fortune have placed upon my throne, which he 
has sullied with the blood of a Bourbon! Religion 
may bind me to pardon an assassin, but the tyrant 
of my people must always be my enemy. In this 
century it is more glorious to merit a sceptre than 
to wield it. The mysterious decrees of Providence 
may condemn me to end my days in exile; but 
neither posterity nor my contemporaries shall have 
the right to say that in adversity I showed myself 
for an instant unworthy to occupy the throne of my 
ancestors." 

Nothing discouraged Louis XVIII. ; neither the 
adhesion of nearly the whole French episcopate to 
the new reign, nor the plebiscite raising the 
Emperor to the throne, nor the Pope's consecration 
of his crown. He protested against the Empire by 
an act dated at Warsaw, June 5, 1804, which was 
expressed in these words: "In taking the title of 
Emperor and proposing to make it hereditary in his 



THE SOJOURN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 265 

family, Bonaparte has just set the seal upon his usur- 
pation. This new act of a revolution in which all 
has been invalid from the beginning, cannot possibly 
annul my rights; but, responsible for my conduct 
to all sovereigns, whose rights are not less infringed 
than mine, and whose thrones are shaken by the 
principles which the Senate of Paris has dared to 
advance; responsible to France, to my family, and 
to honor, I should think I was betraying the com- 
mon cause if I kept silence on this occasion. I 
declare, then, in presence of the sovereigns, that far 
from recognizing the imperial title which Bonaparte 
has just caused to be conferred upon him by a body 
which has not even a legal existence, I protest 
against this title and against the subsequent acts 
to which it may give rise." 

The Duchess of Angouleme, with whom the idea 
of royalty by divine right was a religion, rejoiced 
in this haughty attitude on her uncle's part. She 
would not herself have written in any other style. 
It is claimed that Napoleon, impressed by the per- 
sistency and solemnity with which the Pretender 
asserted rights mocked at by so many people, said : 
"The Count of Lille has done well; he would be 
despised if he yielded without a struggle; a pre- 
tender ought always to protest; it is the only way 
of reigning that is left him." 

Napoleon exerted such an influence over the Prus- 
sian government at this time, however, that Louis 
XVIII. did not find himself at ease in Warsaw. 



266 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

He resolved to repair to Grodno, on Russian terri- 
tory, in order to concert measures with his brother, 
the Count of Artois, which should give his protesta- 
tions a more striking character. Just as he was 
about departing from Warsaw, he learned that an 
attempt to poison him and his family had been 
organized. The man who had been tampered with 
in order to induce him to commit the crime, himself 
revealed it to the Count of Avaray. The Pretender 
then wrote a letter to the president of the Prussian 
Chamber of Warsaw, dated July 24, 1804, which 
began thus: "I have been informed, monsieur, of 
an attempt made to assassinate me. If my person 
alone were in question, I would turn a deaf ear to 
such warnings; but as the lives of my family and 
servants are likewise menaced, I should be derelict 
to the most sacred duties if I slighted this danger. 
I beg you, therefore, to come this evening and talk 
it over with me." The Prussian magistrate, evad- 
ing the inquiry, replied that he would hand the 
matter over to the police, and the bottom of this 
underhanded affair was never known. 

Instead of going to Grodno, as he had at first 
intended, Louis XVIII. proceeded toward Sweden 
and was joined by the Count of Artois at Calmar, 
October 5, 1804. The two brothers drew up there 
together the manifesto which was to appear on the 
subsequent December 2, the day of Napoleon's coro- 
nation. While the Pretender was at Calmar he 
received, through the intermediation of the Prussian 



THE SOJOURN IN PRUSSIA AND POLAND 267 

Minister in Sweden, an official note from the Prus- 
sian government interdicting him from returning to 
Warsaw. He then asked the Emperor Alexander's 
permission to reside in Mittau, and it was granted. 
The Count of Artois returned to England. Louis 
XVIII. embarked at Calraar, landed at Riga, and 
went to Mittau, where his wife and his niece did 
not rejoin him until spring. 



XII 

THE SECOND SOJOUEK AT MITTAU 

AT "Warsaw the Duchess of AngoulSme was 
surrounded by unanimous sympathies. It 
pleased her to be in the midst of a Catholic popula- 
tion with whom she had sentiments and ideas in com- 
mon. One of the Kings of France, Henri III., had 
been King of Poland, and the Princess was descended 
from Marie Leczinska, the daughter of a Polish 
sovereign. These souvenirs aided the prestige of 
the daughter of Louis XVI. ; and the Polish nobil- 
ity, who speak French as well as they do their 
native tongue, paid her the most delicate and respect- 
ful attentions. The Princess did not leave without 
regret a land which reminded her of France, for the 
Poles have been called the Frenchmen of the north, 
and she returned with apprehension to Mittau, 
whence she had been driven out four years before 
under such painful circumstances. 

At Mittau the Duchess of Angouleme once more 
installed herself with her husband, her uncle, and 
her aunt in the former palace of the Dukes of Cour- 
land. In 1805 two fires broke out there. The 
guilty persons were not discovered, but the author- 
268 



THE SECOND SOJOURN AT MITTAU 269 

ities declared that the fires had been intentionally 
kindled. This affair remained mysterious, like that 
of the attempted poisoning of the royal family at 
Warsaw. 

Meanwhile, the echo of the noise of arms pene- 
trated even to the asylum of Louis XVIII. and his 
niece. A bloody war desolated the country lying 
between the Vistula and the Niemen. The terrible 
battle of Eylau was fought February 7, 1807. The 
military convoys of wounded Frenchmen or pris- 
oners were forwarded to Mittau. Although a con- 
tagious fever broke out among them, the Abbe 
Edgeworth of Firmont went to their assistance. 
He paid with his life for this devotion ; but he was 
not abandoned on his deathbed by the daughter of 
the martyr-king. Braving the contagion, she ex- 
claimed : " No, I will never forsake him who is more 
than my friend. Nothing shall prevent me from 
nursing him myself; I do not ask any one to go 
with me." And it was she who, on May 22, 1807, 
received the venerable priest's last sigh. 

Louis XVIII. wrote to the Abba's brother: "The 
letter of the Archbishop of Rheims will inform you 
of the painful loss we have just endured. You will 
regret the best and tenderest of brothers. I lament 
a friend, a benefactor, who conducted a martyr-king 
to the gates of heaven, and who has taught me the 
way thither. The world was not worthy to possess 
him long. Let us submit, reminding ourselves that 
he has received the reward of his virtues. But we 



270 THE DUCHESS OF ANQOUL&ME 

are not forbidden to accept consolations of an inferior 
order, and I offer them to you in tne general afflic- 
tion which this grief has occasioned. Yes, mon- 
sieur, the death of your worthy brother has been a 
public calamity. My family, and all the loyal 
Frenchmen who surround me, seem, like me, 
to have lost a father. The people of Mittau of 
every class and creed have shared our sorrow. May 
this recital lighten your regrets ! May I thus give 
to the memory of the most worthy of men a new 
proof of veneration and attachment! " 

Eight days after the Abb^ Edgeworth's death, the 
Emperor Alexander arrived at Mittau, May 30, 
1807. Before rejoining his army, then in camp on 
the banks of the Pregel, and about to renew the 
struggle against Napoleon, the Czar desired to pay a 
visit to his guests. He was very affable to the 
Pretender and particularly courteous to the wife of 
that Prince and the Duchess of Angouleme. He 
already promised a Bourbon restoration with the aid 
of Russia, but he was not to keep his promise until 
seven years later. Before its realization he passed 
through a period when, like his father, Paul I., 
he felt a momentary enthusiasm for the victor of 
Austerlitz, Eylau, and Friedland. 

After the treaty of Tilsit, signed July 7, 1807, 
one would have said that Russia was forever recon- 
ciled with imperial France. Louis XVIII. was not 
slow to see that under such circumstances his pres- 
ence at Mittau was no longer reconcilable with his 



THE SECOND SOJOURN AT MITTAU 271 

dignity. Nevertheless, he took great care not to 
embroil himself with the Emperor Alexander. On 
his side, the Czar avoided the. rude measures taken 
by Paul I. in 1801. He did not banish Louis 
XVIII. from Russia, and it was of his own free will 
that the Prince repaired to England, where he not 
unreasonably thought that his sojourn would be 
more useful to his cause. 

Leaving his wife and niece at Mittau, Louis 
XVIII. left that city with the Duke of Angouleme, 
and embarked at Riga for Sweden in October, 1807. 
King Gustavus IV. gave him an excellent reception 
and placed the Swedish frigate FrSga at his disposal 
and under his orders. He sailed in it to England 
in November. His wife and the Duchess of Angou- 
ISme remained at Mittau until July, 1808, when, 
quitting Russia forever, they took ship in the port 
of Liban. After a pleasant voyage they landed on 
English shores and went to rejoin Louis XVIII. , 
who was then the guest of the Marquis of Bucking- 
ham, at Gosfield Hall, in Essex. 



XIII 

HAETWELL 

LOUIS XVIII. had been summoned to England 
neither by the court nor the government. 
The Cabinet of London was weary of the intrigues 
of the French emigres and of the always useless 
succors given them, and feared to make any pledges 
to the Bourbon cause except those prompted by 
England's interests and continental policy. Warned 
that the Pretender was bound for England, it 
wanted to relegate him to Scotland, and it sent 
orders to every port which he might possibly enter, 
desiring him to sail at once for Leith, whence he 
might go to Edinburgh, where an asylum would be 
arranged for him in the ancient castle of Holyrood. 
On landing at Yarmouth, Louis XVIII. received 
this official injunction. He refused to comply with 
it, and after having declared that he would return 
to meet all the exiles of the continent rather than 
consent to the prescribed sojourn at Holyrood, he 
claimed the simple rights of a citizen on the free 
soil of England. The Marquis of Buckingham 
offered, and induced him to accept, magnificent 
hospitality in his splendid castle of Gosfield Hall, 
272 



HARTWELL 273 



in Essex, near the borders of Norfolkshire. Louis 
XVIII. was rejoined there, in the spring of 1808, by 
his wife and the Duchess of Angouleme. Desiring 
to thank their host for his generous reception, the 
exiles built a small temple dedicated to gratitude in 
the park of Gosfield Hall. Five oaks were to over- 
shadow it. The first was planted by Louis XVIII., 
the second by his wife, the third by his niece, and 
the fourth and fifth by his nephews the Dukes of 
Angouleme and Berry. 

In April, 1809, the Pretender, wishing to be 
nearer London and to have a dwelling of his own, 
went to the modest manor of Hartwell, which he 
first hired and afterwards bought from Sir George 
Lee. This domain, which was more like a farm 
than a manor-house, and which was about sixteen 
leagues from London, was vast in its proportions, 
but miserable in appearance. In order to contain 
more persons, nearly every room had been divided 
into compartments. The offices were detached build- 
ings surrounded by gardens. Some of these con- 
structions contained very narrow huts for the 
servants. Taken all together, they looked like a 
village. The room that Louis XVIII. occupied 
most frequently was almost as small as a ship's 
cabin. It was ornamented with portraits of Louis 
XVI., Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth, and 
Louis XVII. Before dinner the Prince's guests 
assembled in a large drawing-room where there was 
a billiard table. In going to the dining-room, 



274 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

Louis XVIII. always went first. The repast was 
simple, and not many dishes were served. The 
Pretender did the honors with much affability 
and grace. After dinner they returned to the 
drawing-room for coffee, conversation, and whist. 
Every time that Louis XVIII. entered or went 
out, the Duchess of Angouleme dropped him a 
profound courtesy; he responded by a bow and 
kissing her hand. Visitors were surprised at the 
number of persons lodged at the King's expense 
in the house and its dependencies. It was like a 
rising colony. 

"Louis XVIII.," the Baron of Vitrolles has said 
in his Memoirs, "displayed immovable courage in 
enduring his long exile ; he was sustained by a true 
sentiment of dignity, his faith in his rights, and 
confidence in his future. In his retreat at Hartwell 
he was at peace with himself in the midst of a very 
narrow social circle, but one in which he exercised 
every sort of superiority; he preferred that of wit. 
He lived like a great nobleman on his estates, sur- 
rounded by a numerous family. Political interests 
and events were seldom spoken of. Historical facts 
and dates, French, Italian, and English literature, 
formed the subject of the evening conversations at 
which all the inhabitants of the castle came together. 
The Countess of Narbonne, afterwards duchess, dis- 
played there the graces of her mind and her pure 
and elegant diction. She was the object of the 
King's preference and attention." 



HAETWELL 275 



As a consolation in his exile and an affirmation 
of his rights, the Pretender kept up an appearance 
of royalty at Hartwell. Near his phantom of a 
throne stood captains of the guard, the Dukes of 
Gramont and of Havr^; and first gentlemen of the 
bedchamber, the Dukes of Fleury and of Aumont. 
When he went to London and was present at divine 
service in the tiny chapel of Little George Street, 
erected at the cost of the French emigres, he occu- 
pied an armchair which resembled a throne. Behind 
this armchair was the princes' bench, where the 
Duchess of AngoulSme, the Count of Artois, the 
Duke of Angouleme, the Duke of Berry, the Prince 
of Cond^, and the Duke of Bourbon seated them- 
selves. Moreover, there were benches for those 
French bishops who, refusing to acknowledge the 
Concordat, had denied the Pope's right to dispose 
of their sees without their consent. Among them 
were Mgrs. Lamarche, Dillon, Flamarens, Argentr^, 
Bethisy, Amelot, Villedieu, Laurentie, Belbceuf, 
and Colbert. 

The English government had not recognized Louis 
XVIII. 's roj^al title, and yet when his wife died, 
November 13, 1810, they paid her the same honors 
as to a queen, and she was buried with pomp in 
Westminster Abbey. On her deathbed the Princess 
had addressed pious exhortations to her nephews. 
"As to you, my niece," she said to the Duchess of 
Angouleme, " all you need to go to heaven is a pair 
of wings." 



276 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

At this period the most infatuated partisans of 
Louis XVIII. considered the hope of his return to 
France as a chimerical dream. Napoleon's marriage 
with an Austrian Archduchess was thought to have 
consolidated the imperial dynasty forever. " Bona- 
parte," says the Baron of Vitrolles in his Memoirs, 
"had done everything to efface the memory of the 
royal family. Since his reign began it had been 
named to him but once, and that was in the ditches 
of Vincennes. The generation which knew our 
principles had disappeared; that which was coming 
up scarcely knew that Louis XVI. had brothers ; the 
orphan of the Temple was an historic personage for 
them, and they only learned by the Duke of En- 
ghien's murder that there were still Cond^s. We 
ourselves, who in our youth had fought under their 
flags and for their noble cause, were dispersed, 
without ties or union, if not without souvenirs. 
Many were connected with the tyrant; the bravest 
in the army, the neediest in the excise, the most 
obsequious at court. Those who still retained some 
trace of their early sentiments in their hearts were 
in private and straitened circumstances, without 
influence and with no hope of bettering their condi- 
tion. In ten years we had barely heard these 
princes whom we held in veneration mentioned more 
than two or three times. The vague and often 
lying news we obtained of them was transmitted 
orally, and so to say by infiltration, without our 
knowing whence it came. We were told that the 



HARTWELL 277 



Duchess of Angouleme liad given birth to a son, 
and that the Prince Regent of England had been the 
godfather of the royal infant. At other times we 
would hear of one of our princes appearing upon 
some field of battle and fighting against the usurper 
for the rights of his house. We still commemorated 
January 21 at the church and the feast of Saint 
Louis at table, and these vivid emotions revealed to 
us that at the bottom of our hearts lay ineffaceable 
sentiments and passions unperceived in the ordinary 
course of our lives. Parties die when they are built 
purely upon interest; they live like religions when 
they are founded upon beliefs." 

Napoleon, the father of the King of Rome, had 
reached the summit of his power. His court almanac 
resembled that of the court of Versailles ; there were 
the same offices, the same names, the same titles, the 
same etiquette. The most prominent emigres^ the 
most notable persons of the old regime, served in the 
household of the new Charlemagne and in that of 
his wife, the daughter of the German Caesars. But 
while discharging their functions in the palace of 
the Tuileries and other imperial residences, these 
great lords and ladies thought involuntarily of the 
orphan of the Temple. Even when they forgot the 
others, they remembered this heroine of sorrow. As 
Lamai-tine has said, Louis XVIII. loved the Duch- 
ess of Angouleme through sentiment and through 
policy also. " He protected himself in the eyes of all 
Europe through this beauty, youth, and piety. He 



278 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

called her his Antigone. He pictured himself, lean- 
ing on the arm of this niece, as royaltj'^ protected 
from on high by an angel of grief. She lived with 
him at Hartwell, reminding herself of France with 
bitterness, but of the throne and the country 
with the pride and majesty innate in her blood." 
The daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette 
was the ornament, the poetry, the consecration, of 
the little court of the exiled King. If Louis 
XVIII. had experienced a momentary weakness, a 
glance at his niece would have sufficed to renew his 
faith and hope. 

It is certain that Marie Louise, with her double 
crown as Empress of the French and Queen of Italy, 
was not more majestic on her throne than the orphan 
of the Temple in her exile. 

Although it was her custom to avoid parties and 
entertainments, the Duchess of Angouleme could 
not refuse to appear at the English court in 1811. 
The Baron of G^ramb, who quitted court-life for the 
cloister some years later, and became a Carthusian 
monk, thus expressed himself concerning the young 
Princess: "For the first time Her Royal Highness 
the Duchess of Angouleme appeared in London at 
a public assembly. Shall I say that all eyes were 
instantly fixed upon her ? No ; for yielding entirely 
to my own observations and the vivid emotions 
which contended in my heart, I could not notice 
those of others. Never did virtue and innocence 
display themselves to mankind in traits where a 



HARTWELL 279 



beauty so touching blended with so profound a mel- 
ancholy. I dare not describe all that there is of 
enchanting and affecting in her glance, all that is 
celestial in her smile ; I should fear to profane what 
I had seen in seeking to portray it." 

And the Austrian chamberlain, who assuredly 
would not have spoken with such enthusiasm of 
Marie Louise, the daughter of his Emperor, contin- 
ues in a truly lyrical transport: "In contemplating 
these features which, they say, recall the goodness 
of Louis XVI. and the dignity of Marie Antoinette, 
these were the longings that escaped with my sighs 
from my burdened heart : O sweet and tender dove ! 
May storms respect forever the shelter where thou 
dost repose ! May new sorrows never come to afflict 
this young heart which grief has moulded. Alas! 
thou hast known naught of life except its sufferings 
and afflictions. If, in the midst of catastrophes 
thou hast been spared, if the rage of those who 
assassinated the beings so dear was not expended 
upon thee, if thou hast come out pure as the angels 
from that land where license and crime held sway, 
what destiny does Providence reserve for thee? 
Rescued from shipwreck amid the most horrible 
tempests, art thou the token which God will one 
day offer men to show them that His anger is 
appeased, and that the world, crushed under so many 
ruins, at last may breathe again ? Will the feeble 
hand of a woman lift up anew some day the social 
edifice that has been drenched in blood?" If for- 



280 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

eigners spoke in such terms of the daughter of Louis 
XVI., one can readily imagine what the veneration 
of the French royalists must have been. In their 
eyes, the saintly Princess was the living symbol of 
the twin religions of the throne and the altar. 

The Duchess of Angouleme, who was her hus- 
band's only love, occupied herself at Hartwell 
chiefly with works of charity. She meditated, read, 
and prayed. Her private household was composed 
of the Countess of Choisy, now become the Vis- 
countess of Argout; Count Etienne, now the Duke 
of Damas, and his duchess, the sister of Madame 
de Narbonne. She often received visits from the 
Count of Artois and the Duke of Berry, who 
lived in London. After the death of Madame de 
Polastron, for whom he had felt the longest and 
tenderest affection of his life, the Count of Artois 
had become profoundly devout, and his religious 
sentiments were thenceforward in harmony with 
those of the daughter of Louis XVI. As to the 
Duke of Berry, who loved the world and the arts, 
he led a stormy life. A beautiful Englishwoman 
had captivated his imagination and his heart. He 
should have had the emotions of war; those of love 
consoled him. The Duchess of Angouleme fre- 
quently saw the Prince of Cond^ also, for whom she 
displayed great sympathy, and to whom Louis 
XVIII. wrote: "Enjoy, my dear cousin, the same 
repose which the most illustrious of your ancestors 
voluntarily tasted under the laurels ; all will become 



HARTWELL 281 



Chantilly to you." On his part, the Prince of 
Cond^ had addressed to the Duke of Berry, his 
former subordinate, a letter in which he said: 
"Doubtless our life is distressing; but we have 
done our duty. In existing circumstances it is for 
you, not for me, to raise the royal standard, and for 
us all to march under your orders. Your extreme 
youth may for a time have necessitated the incon- 
venience of your being under mine, but so long as a 
little strength remains to me, I shall glory in being 
your first grenadier." 

In speaking of the princes, nobles, and bishops 
who came to salute Louis XVIII., M. de Vitrolles 
has said: "The homage of these elders of France 
formed for the King, on ceremonious occasions, if 
not a court, at least a circle sufficiently numerous to 
hide from him the emptiness that lay behind them. 
He bore in his royal nature the dignified sentiments 
and the whole majesty of his race. Nobility of 
thought was as natural to him as that of the blood 
flowing in his veins, and whenever he had to take 
a determination he rose to the height of all the 
kings he represented. In the customs of his exiled 
life he was fond of the r61e and the appearance of 
royalty." To have a favorite seemed to him a 
monarchical tradition. At Hartwell he had two; at 
first the Count of Avaray, and afterwards the Count 
of Blacas. "The Count of Avaray," adds M. de 
Vitrolles, " had been the most intimate ; there is no 
ancient friendship either real or fabulous, in prose 



283 THE DUCBESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

or in verse, that has not been called on to celebrate 
this attachment. Castor and Pollux, Achilles and 
Patroclus, Nisus and Euryalus, Augustus and 
Cinna, Henri IV. and Sully, etc. The King had 
given the title of duke to M. d'Avaray as soon as 
he succeeded to the right to the throne, and the 
father inherited his son's title as soon as the royalty 
became real. But what was it to be the favorite of 
a King in exile? He was everything; he freed his 
master from the important cares of his empire; 
he ruled the house, the servants, the kitchens, and 
interposed himself between the King and the princes 
of his family so as to keep them at a distance. . . . 

" Having been attacked by a lung complaint, M. 
d'Avaray travelled in Italy in search of health. At 
Florence he met M. de Blacas, who was of a very 
ancient family of Provence, long since fallen into 
that decline of fortune which tarnishes the lustre of 
the greatest names. An exiled, poverty-stricken 
sub-lieutenant, he was living in the humblest way 
at Florence when M. d'Avaray employed him to 
assist in his correspondence. In other circumstances 
this would have meant a secretaryship, but it was 
quite another thing in those of the emigration. 
Having been brought to England and presented to 
the King by his new patron, M. de Blacas made 
himself useful and agreeable, and when the progress 
of M. d'Avaray's malady led him to seek the island 
of Madeira, celebrated for its cures of such diseases, 
he left his prot^g^ with the King to conduct their 
correspondence. " 



HART WELL 283 



M. d'Avaray died in Madeira, June 3, 1811. A 
few days previous, Louis XVIII. wrote: "Provi- 
dence could not take from me more than it gave 
when it granted me such a friend as my dear 
d'Avaray." Besides the title of duke, the King 
had conferred on his favorite the right to put the 
escutcheon of France in his arms with this device : 
Vtcit iter durum pietas. 

The succession as official favorite devolved upon 
M. de Blacas. Lamartine represents him as pos- 
sessing "the unlimited affection of his master, and 
meriting it only by his honor and fidelity; he was 
inwardly humble, but haughty in appearance, re- 
garded the King as all and France as nothing, was 
unyielding through rigidity of character, and carried 
all the arrogance and pride of the old absolute courts 
into an obscure exile and a reign of compromises." 

M. de Blacas excited great jealousy, moreover, 
among those who surrounded Louis XVIII. M. de 
Vitrolles says : " War was declared against the new 
favorite. To praise the old one was not enough; 
no occasion was let slip to disgust this one, and to 
display scorn and contemptuous airs and, in a word, 
that kind of insults which are resented the more 
because it is impossible to describe and complain 
of them since they are so unsubstantial. But in so 
doing they merely played into the hand of him they 
wanted to ruin. The King was stubborn in this 
war of ill manners ; all his force of character was 
brought out by it. If the attacks had come from 



284 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

without, he would readily have abandoned the object 
of them; but against his own party he defended 
him as if he had said to himself, unguibus et rostro. 
Whenever an insult was offered his favorite he 
answered it by a new evidence of favor. 'I will 
make him so great that they will not dare to attack 
him again,' said he when he appointed M. de Blacas 
grand-master of the wardrobe. What confidence 
he must have had in his royalty to think that he 
was doing something in appointing a grand officer 
of his household at Hartwell! " 

At the time when Louis XVIII. thus continued 
to play with imperturbable dignity his r61e of sover- 
eign in partihus infideUiim, or, better, fidelium, a 
Bourbon restoration was hardly considered possible 
by any one except himself and the Duchess of 
Angouleme. As M. de Viel-Castel says in his 
remarkable history of the Restoration, "military 
expeditions, political intrigues, conspiracies, sur- 
jDrises, had all alike failed. The ill-success of so 
many enterprises from which so much had been 
expected, the punishment of some of their authors, 
the apparent impossibility of shaking that colossus 
of imperial power before which the whole continent 
trembled, had long obliged the Bourbons to avoid 
any manifestation of their claims. The royalist 
agency which had secretly existed at Paris had been 
broken up. The protest published by Louis XVIII. 
in 1804, at the time when Napoleon put on the im- 
perial diadem, was the last sign of life he had given 
to his adherents." 



HABTWELL 28^ 



Until the Russian campaign, royalty was in a 
somnolent state at Hartwell. The Pretender sel- 
dom spoke of politics, but he awaited with vague 
confidence some unforeseen event or other which 
would bring about a thorough change. Unfortu- 
nately, these events were to prove the most fright- 
ful of catastrophes. The wretched thing about the 
royalist cause is that it was weakened by the vic- 
tories and strengthened by the defeats of France. 
The hopes of royalty seemed extinguished after 
Wagram. They rekindled with the burning of 
Moscow. Louis XVIII., who read the French jour- 
nals diligently, and discerned the symptoms of ruin 
and disaffection under the adulations of a press sold 
to the imperial police, understood that the retreat 
from Russia had given the Empire a mortal blow, 
and that the Restoration was thenceforward only a 
matter of time. At once he conceived the idea of 
recalling himself by an opportune and skilful meas- 
ure to the memory of France and Europe which 
seemed to have forgotten him; he wrote to the 
Emperor Alexander on behalf of the French princes. 
"The fate of arms," said he in his letter, "has 
caused more than one hundred and fifty thousand 
prisoners, most of whom are Frenchmen, to fall into 
your hands. No matter what flag they served; they 
are unfortunate, and I see in them only my children ; 
I recommend them to Your Imperial Majesty. Deign 
to consider how much many of them have already 
suffered, and ameliorate the severities of their lot! 



286 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

Let them learn that the victor is their father's 
friend! Your Majesty cannot give me a more affect- 
ing proof of your sentiments toward me." The Czar 
did not even reply to the Pretender. 

Alexander's silence did not discourage Louis 
XVIIL, who published another manifesto, February 
1, 1813. He proved by this adroit and liberal docu- 
ment that time, exile, and the lessons of experience 
had caused him to make some useful reflections. 
He promised to maintain the administrative and 
judiciary bodies in the plenitude of their powers, 
to leave all functionaries in their employments, to 
forbid all prosecutions for things accomplished in 
an unhappy past whose oblivion would be sealed by 
his return, and he invited the imperial Senate, 
which he lauded, to make itself the chief instrument 
of the Restoration. 

After the battle of Leipsic the Pretender thought 
that the speedy success of his cause was certain. 
Thus, as Lamartine has said, the re-establishment 
of a Bourbon on the throne of France seemed to him 
a duty on the part of God Himself; and the hour 
which he and the orphan of the Temple awaited as 
a justification of Providence was at last about to 
strike. 



XIV 



THE END OF THE EXILE 



AT the beginning of 1814, Louis XVIII. was 
convinced that his return to France was 
imminent; and yet the European Powers had not 
yet promised him their support. Not having aban- 
doned the idea of treating with Napoleon, they 
feared to increase the difficulties of the contest by 
linking their cause to that of a family having 
numerous adversaries in France. The Emperor 
Alexander, jealous perhaps of the antiquity of the 
Bourbon race, showed little sympathy for them, and 
was reputed to favor Bernadotte as sovereign of the 
French people. The Austrian Emperor seemed 
unconcerned about Louis XVIII., and his coldness 
was attributed to a lingering interest in the fate of 
his daughter, Marie Louise. Although the whole 
outlook seemed discouraging, the Count of Artois 
and his two sons, the Duke of Angouleme and 
the Duke of Berry, decided to leave England for the 
purpose of taking part in approaching events. The 
Count of Artois wanted to throw himself into the 
midst of the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian armies 
which were attacking France in the north and east. 

287 



288 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

The Duke of Angouleme wanted to go to Spain, 
where an English and Spanish army was advancing 
toward the South of France. The Duke of Berry- 
proposed to go to the island of Jersey, near the 
departments of Normandy, where the conscription 
had just occasioned some troubles thought likely to 
prelude an insurrection. 

The three princes embarked on English vessels 
in January, 1814. The Count of Artois landed in 
Holland, and it was not until he had wandered for 
more than a month in that country, Germany, and 
Switzerland, that the Allies gave him permission to 
set foot on French territory. The Duke of Angou- 
leme was able to reach Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which 
was held by English troops, and on February 2, he 
issued a proclamation there in which he invited the 
French army commanded by Marshal Soult to aid in 
the overthrow of Napoleon. The marshal, who was 
to display such royalist sentiments some weeks later 
on, replied to this attempted corruption of his troops 
by a proclamation in which he said : " Soldiers, they 
have had the infamy to persuade you to violate your 
oaths to the Emperor. This offence can only be 
avenged in blood. To arms ! . . . Let us devote to 
opprobrium and public execration every Frenchman 
who would favor the insidious projects of our ene- 
mies. Let us fight to the end against the enemies 
of our august Emperor and our country. Hatred to 
traitors! War to the death against those who at- 
tempt to divide us ! Let us contemplate the prodi- 



THE END OF TEE EXILE 289 

gious efforts of our great Emperor and his signal 
victories, and die with arms in our hands rather 
than outlive our honor!" 

As to the Duke of Beriy, he landed in the island 
of Jersey. He had been told that he would have 
but to fall upon the coast of Normandy in order to 
be surrounded at once by a royalist army. But he 
soon perceived that this was a delusion, and re- 
mained in Jersey until the consummation of the 
events about to take place. It was from there he 
wrote the following letter, quoted by Chateaubri- 
and: "Here I am like Tantalus, in sight of this 
unhappy France which has such difficulty in break- 
ing its chains ; and winds, bad weather, and the tide 
all come to arrest the courageous efforts of the 
heroes who are going to risk the dangers which I 
am not yet allowed to share. You, whose soul is 
so beautiful, so French, understand all that I expe- 
rience, all that it costs me to remain away from 
those shores which I could reach in two hours! 
When the sun lights them up I climb to the highest 
rocks and, with my glass in my hand, I follow the 
whole coast, I see the rocks of Coutances. My 
imagination becomes excited; I see myself spring- 
ing ashore, surrounded by Frenchmen with white 
cockades in their hats ; I hear the cry, ' Long live 
the King ! ' that cry which no Frenchman ever hears 
unmoved; the most beautiful woman in the prov- 
ince wreathes a white scarf about me, for love and 
glory always go together. We march on Cher- 



290 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUhtME 

bourg; some wretched fort, garrisoned by foreigners, 
tries to defend itself; we carry it by storm, and a 
vessel goes to seek the King with the white standard 
which recalls the glorious and happy days of France. 
Ah I madame, when one is but a few hours from the 
accomplishment of so probable a dream, could he 
think of going further away ? " 

However, the French royalists made no move as 
yet. "We had often grieved," says M. de Vitrolles, 
"at not having the least communication from our 
princes. We were ready to accuse them of aban- 
doning their cause at the moment when they might 
have set up their flag anew. But one of those Eng- 
lish journals so strictly prohibited reached us one 
day through the intermediation of the Archbishop 
of Malines ; it apprised us that Monsieur, the Count 
of Artois, had embarked for the continent, January 
25; and that, about the same time, the Duke of 
Angoul^me had also left England for the south of 
France, there to offer himself generously to his 
friends and enemies. This news, entirely over- 
looked by the majority, and hardly noticed by those 
who saw it, was for us a flash of light and fire. It 
enlivened our hopes and revived our purposes. I 
decided on the spot to go in search of Monsieur 
wherever he might be." 

Before rejoining the Count of Artois, M. de 
Vitrolles went to the headquarters of the Allies and 
had interviews with Prince Metternich and the 
Emperor Alexander which were not very encourag- 



THE END OF THE EXILE 291 

ing for the Bourbon cause. The Czar said to him : 
"The proof of attachment you give to your former 
masters is certainly laudable ; it comes from a senti- 
ment of honor and loyalty which I appreciate, but 
the obstacles which henceforward separate the princes 
of the House of Bourbon from the throne of France 
seem to me insurmountable. . . , They would 
come back embittered by misfortune, and even 
though generous sentiments or wise policy should 
oblige them to sacrifice their resentments, they 
would not be strong enough to pacify those who 
have suffered for them and by them. The spirit of 
the army, that army so powerful in France, would 
be opposed to them ; the impulse of the new genera- 
tions would be against them." 

The Emperor Alexander then enumerated several 
combinations which had occurred to the minds of 
the Allies concerning the fate of France. "We 
have studied much," said he, "about what might 
suit France if Napoleon should disappear. For 
some time we considered Bernadotte; his influence 
over the army, and the favor with which he must be 
regarded by the friends of the Revolution, fixed our 
thoughts on him for some time ; but afterwards vari- 
ous motives made us put him aside. Eugene Beau- 
harnais has been spoken of; he is esteemed by 
France, cherished by the army, and sprung from the 
ranks of the nobility ; would he not have many par- 
tisans? After all, might not a wisely organized 
Republic be more congenial to the French mind? 



292 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

It is not with impunity that ideas of liberty have 
germinated long in such a country as yours. They 
make the establishment of a more concentrated 
power very difficult." 

After recalling the Czar's language, M. de Vi- 
trolles adds : " Where were we, great God ! on the 
17th of March? The Emperor Alexander, the King 
of the kings united for the safety of the world, talk- 
ing to me of the Republic ! . . . I disguised toler- 
ably well the astonishment I felt at these last words, 
and was sufficiently master of myself to answer the 
Emperor without allowing any alteration in my voice 
to betray my emotion. I had not associated enough 
with kings to anticipate such an allocution. I thought 
it was I who should plead, and that they would re- 
spond by some great and noble words, and by senti- 
ments as noble as the dignity of my interlocutors 
presupposed. But not at all ; they at once engaged 
me in a hand-to-hand contest, raining on me the 
closest, strongest, and completest reasons ; in fact, 
all and the only ones that could be objected to me." 

Even after the rupture of the Congress of Chatil- 
lon the Powers did not yet pronounce for the royal- 
ist cause. The Russian generals had ended by 
authorizing the Count of Artois to come to Nancy, 
but without cockade, decoration, or political title, 
as a simple traveller. "It must be owned," says 
M. de Vitrolles again, "that until then his hopes 
had received no encouragement. The regions where 
Monsieur sought to exert his influence were occu- 



THE END OF THE EXILE 293 

pied by foreign armies ; the wishes of the entire 
population were for a speedy pacification, and the 
re-establishment of the Bourbons seemed rather a 
question which would prolong the war. They saw 
no escape from so many evils save a peace with 
Bonaparte. On the other hand, the overtures made 
to the allied sovereigns had been always and utterly 
repelled, and yet Monsieur's claims had been ex- 
ceedingly small ; he merely solicited permission to 
rejoin the army and fight as a simple volunteer. 
At the time of my arrival at Nancy he was pro- 
foundly discouraged. I brought a kingdom; they 
felt it; but they did not so quickly comprehend it. 
Monsieur still gave precedence to his request to 
join the army ; all that I announced to him, all the 
most elevated subjects of our interviews, did not 
avail to change his notion, and the letters he gave 
me, on my departure, for the Emperors of Russia and 
Austria still gave the first rank to this request to 
take part in active army service. He has one of 
those minds that are sluggish to move. " 

At the very time when the Count of Artois 
seemed discouraged at Nancy, an event occurred at 
Bordeaux which revived all royalist hopes. The 
mayor was a count of the Empire, M. de Lynch, 
whose antecedents did not seem to foreshadow the 
part he was about to play. Three months before he 
had laid at the foot of Napoleon's throne the homage 
of the pretended devotion of the people of Bordeaux, 
and had said in a more than adulatory address: 



294 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

" Napoleon has done everything for the French ; the 
French will do everything for him." January 29, 
1814, on presenting the flags to the National Guard 
just organized, he promised to give proof of fidelity 
and devotion to the Emperor in case there should be 
danger of invasion. Almost at the same time, in 
concert with M. Taffard of Saint-Germain, who en- 
titled himself King's commissioner for Guyenne, he 
sent two secret agents to Lord Wellington entreat- 
ing him to send a body of English troops to Bor- 
deaux, saying that if they were accompanied by the 
Duke of Angouleme they would be certain to find a 
good reception. 

Lord Wellington had at first shown little sym- 
pathy for the royalist cause. On entering French 
territory, he had written to his government that the 
Bourbons were as little known, perhaps less known, 
to their former subjects than the princes of any 
other dynasty, and that if it suited the Allies to 
present a new sovereign to the French nation, it 
mattered little from what family he was chosen. 
Lord Wellington began by declining the offer of the 
two Bordelais envoys. He considered it imprudent 
to detach an army corps from its base of operations 
and to embarrass the negotiations of the Congress of 
Chatillon, the issue of which was still doubtful. 
He added that he was unwilling to compromise 
honest people whom the fortunes of war might pos- 
sibly oblige him to leave exposed to imperial ven- 
geance. He changed his mind a few days later. 



THE END OF THE EXILE 295 

Having defeated Marshal Soult at the battle of 
Orthez, he removed his headquarters to Saint-Sever, 
and concluded that from the strategetical point of 
view the occupation of a city like Bordeaux would 
be useful. Hence, on March 7, he detached a body 
of fifteen thousand men from his army, put them 
under the orders of General Beresford, and sent 
them towards Bordeaux, which Marshal Soult's 
retreat to Toulouse had left unprotected. Without 
English troops the royalists would not have dared 
to undertake anything, but with them they thought 
success was certain. The garrison of the city num- 
bered only five hundred. At the approach of General 
Beresford's army corps they withdrew, on March 
11. Then the royalists decided that on the follow- 
ing day they would go to meet the English, and 
that on entering Bordeaux with them, they would 
proclaim Louis XVIII. there. This programme 
was executed. A discharge of cannon having given 
the city the signal agreed upon, an immense white 
flag was run up on the steeple of Saint Michel, the 
highest in all Bordeaux. At the same time the 
mayor, M. de Lynch, going to meet General Beres- 
ford, who had arrived at the end of the bridge of 
the Maye, and pointing toward the white flag flying 
from the steeple of Saint Michel, said: "General, 
you will enter a city subject to its legitimate king, 
Louis XVIII. , the ally of His Britannic Majesty; 
you will witness the joy of this great city on replac- 
ing itself under the paternal authority of a Bour- 
bon." 



296 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

General Beresford answered the mayor dryly: 
" Do what you please ; your internal dissensions do 
not concern me. I am here simply to protect per- 
sons and property. I take possession of the city in 
the name of His Britannic Majesty." 

At the same time it was announced that the Duke 
of Angouleme would enter the city two hours later. 
Then there broke out among the royalists an explo- 
sion of joy that bordered on delirium. When the 
nephew of Louis XVIII., the husband of the orphan 
of the Temple, made his appearance, they embraced 
each other, they fell on their knees. It was, who 
should touch the dress or the horse of the Prince, 
who replied to these demonstrations of enthusiasm 
by saying : " No more war, no more conscription, no 
more excise laws ! " He went to the cathedral to 
return thanks to God, thence to the H6tel-de-Ville, 
and took possession of the province in the name of 
Louis XVIII. The white flag replaced the tricolor 
everywhere. In the evening the city was illumi- 
nated. A proclamation from the mayor was read by 
torchlight, in which he felicitated the Bordelais on 
their conduct and thanked the English, Spanish, 
and Portuguese for having joined together in the 
south of France, as others had done in the north, 
"to replace the scourge of nations by a monarch 
who is the father of the people." 

Three days afterward, March 15, 1814, the Duke 
of Angouleme published a proclamation in which 
he said : " It is not the Bourbons who have brought 



TEE END OF THE EXILE 297 

the Allied Powers upon your territory; they has- 
tened thither in order to preserve their dominions 
from new misfortunes. As they are convinced that 
there is no repose either for their own peoples or 
for France save in a limited monarchy, they open 
the way to the throne to the successors of Saint 
Louis. It is only through your suffrages that the 
King my uncle aspires to be the restorer of a pater- 
nal and free government." A deputation went to 
Hartwell to bear to Louis XVIII. the homage of the 
Bordelais, and to entreat him to repair to the first 
French city which had proclaimed his authority. 

However, the satisfaction of the Duke of Angou- 
ISme was not unalloyed. The example of the Bor- 
delais royalists had, so to say, no imitators. With 
the exception of the two little towns of Roquefort 
and Bazas, not a single commune declared for the 
King. General Beresford had left Bordeaux for the 
purpose of besieging Bayonne and the fortress of 
Blaye, the garrison of which, having remained faith- 
ful to the Emperor, was obstructing the free naviga- 
tion of the Garonne. The Duke of Angouleme, 
menaced with a return of the imperial troops, wrote 
to Lord Wellington asking for men and money. 
Lord Wellington refused them. " It is contrary to 
my advice and my way of looking at things," he 
replied to the Prince, "that certain persons of the 
city of Bordeaux have thought proper to proclaim 
King Louis XVIII. These persons have put them- 
selves to no trouble, they have not given a farthing, 



298 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

they have not raised a soldier to sustain their cause, 
and now, because they are in danger, they accuse me 
of not aiding them with my troops. ... I am not 
sure that I would not outstep my duty in lending 
your cause the least protection or support. . . . 
The public must know the truth. If, by ten days 
from now, you have not contradicted the proclama- 
tion of the mayor of Bordeaux, which attributes to 
me the duty of protecting the cause of the royalists 
of the city, I will publicly contradict it myself." 

Left to themselves, the royalists of Bordeaux 
would doubtless have been lost. "What brought 
about the triumph of their cause was the rupture of 
the Congress of Chatillon, the capitulation of Paris, 
and the defection of Essonnes. Meanwhile their 
deputation had arrived at Hartwell on Annunciation 
Day, March 25, 1814. It was composed of M. de 
Tauzia, deputy-mayor of Bordeaux, and Baron de 
Labarte, bearer of the Duke of Angouleme's de- 
spatches. At the moment when the two envoys 
reached the royal residence in a carriage whose pos- 
tilion and horses were adorned with white cockades, 
Louis XVIII. and the Duchess of Angouleme were 
hearing Mass in the chapel of Hartwell. After 
Mass, the King, with his niece standing beside him, 
received the Bordelais envoys. He was surrounded 
by the Archbishop of Rheims, the Count of Blacas, 
the Dukes of Lorges, Havr^, Gramont, Sdrent, and 
Castires, the Viscount of Agoult, the Count of 
Pradel, the Chevalier of Riviere, M. Durepaire, the 



THE END OF THE EXILE 299 

Duchess of S^rent, the Countess Etienne of Damas, 
and the Countess of Choisy. M. de Tauzia, advanc- 
ing towards the King, presented him a letter in 
which M. de Lynch entreated him to come to Bor- 
deaux, where the white flag had been run up. After 
reading this letter, Louis XVIII. embraced the 
faithful royalist who brought it. Emotion was at 
its height. The Duchess of Angouleme insisted on 
hearing all the details of her husband's entrance 
into Bordeaux. Her face, ordinarily so melancholy, 
beamed with joy. 

Louis XVIII. made the following response to the 
mayor's letter: "Count of Lynch, it is with the 
only sentiment that a paternal heart could expe- 
rience that I have learned of the noble outbreak 
which has given back to me my good city of Bor- 
deaux. I do not doubt that this example will be 
imitated by all other portions of my kingdom; but 
neither I nor my successors, nor France itself, will 
forget that, the first restored to liberty, the Borde- 
lais were also the first to fly into their father's arms. 
I express feebly what I feel keenly ; but I hope that 
before long, entering myself within those walls 
where, to use the language of the good Henri, my 
fortune has first begun, I can better show the senti- 
ments which penetrate me. I desire that your fel- 
low-citizens shall learn this through you ; you have 
merited this first reward; for, in spite of your 
modesty, I have been informed of the services you 
have rendered me, and I experience a real happiness 
in discharging my debts." 



300 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

This letter was dated March 31, 1814. On that 
day the Allies entered Paris. Their triumph assured 
that of Louis XVIII. , and it was to Paris, not to 
Bordeaux, that the Prince was about to repair. 
During the last days of his stay on British soil, the 
English government and people lavished enthusi- 
astic attentions on him. One might have thought 
him the King of England. Concerning this Lamar- 
tine has written : " The English nation, moved by 
the call of Burke and other orators at the tragic 
death of Louis XVI., the Queen, and the royal 
family, indignant witnesses of the execution of the 
many victims immolated by the Terror, were consti- 
tutionalists through interest, royalists through piety. 
The history of the French Revolution, constantly 
recited and commented on in London by exiled 
royalist writers, had become there a poetic chronicle 
of misfortune, crime, the scaffold, and the throne. 
England had been generous, prodigal, and hospitable 
toward the French nobility, then exiled and grate- 
ful. . . . The fall of Napoleon and his replace- 
ment on the throne of France by a brother of Louis 
XVI. seemed to the English one of their greatest 
historical achievements." 

Louis XVIII. and the Duchess of Angouleme left 
Hartwell April 20, 1814, and on the same day made 
a formal entry into London. The Prince Regent 
went as far as Stanmore to meet them. He was 
preceded by three couriers in royal livery who wore 
white cockades; the postilions who drove his four- 



THE END OF THE EXILE 301 

horse carriage, in addition to this cockade, wore 
white hats and vests. The Prince arrived at Stan- 
more at two in the afternoon. Every house was 
hung with flags. The gentry of the neighborhood 
formed a cavalcade which assembled about a mile 
from the city in order to accompany Louis XVIII. 
on his entry. Some distance from Stanmore the 
people unharnessed the horses from the royal car- 
riage and drew it themselves. Louis XVIII. 
alighted at the Abercorn inn, where the Prince 
Regent received him and conversed with him in 
French. The cortege then proceeded at an easy 
trot as far as Kilburn, where it began to walk. The 
entry into London was magnificent. They passed 
through Hyde Park and Piccadilly in the midst 
of an immense population who made the air ring 
with enthusiastic acclamations. The English people 
could rejoice better than the French people, for 
neither mourning nor defeat blended with their joy, 
nor was their country occupied by foreign troops. 
Ladies waved handkerchiefs from the windows. 
English and French flags, crowned with laurel, 
streamed on the air together. It was nearly six in 
the evening when the cortege arrived at the Crillon 
hotel, where Louis XVIII. was to put up. The 
Duke of Kent's band, stationed near the hotel, 
played Crod save the King. As the carriage con- 
taining the King of France and the Prince Regent 
drew nearer, the popular acclamations redoubled. 
On alighting from the carriage Louis XVIII. 



302 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

took the arm of the Prince Regent, who led him to 
the principal drawing-room of the hotel Crillon. 
He sat down there, with the Prince Regent and the 
Duchess of Angouleme on his right, the Duke of 
York on his left, and the Prince of Cond6 and the 
Duke of Bourbon behind him. The diplomatic 
corps was present. 

The Prince Regent spoke first. "Your Majesty," 
said he, " will permit me to offer my congratulations 
on the great event which has always been one of my 
dearest wishes, and which must contribute im- 
mensely not only to the welfare of Your Majesty's 
people, but also to the repose and prosperity of other 
nations. I may add with confidence that my senti- 
ments and personal wishes are in harmony with 
those of the whole British nation. The transports 
of triumph which will signalize Your Majesty's 
entry into your own capital, can hardly surpass the 
joy which Your Majesty's restoration to the throne 
of France has caused in the capital of the British 
Empire." 

Louis XVIII. responded: "I beg Your Royal 
Highness to accept my most lively and sincere 
thanks for the congratulations just addressed to me. 
I offer them especially for the continued attentions 
of which I have been the object, not less from Your 
Royal Highness than from every member of your 
illustrious family. It is to the counsels of Your 
Royal Highness, to this glorious country, and the 
confidence of its inhabitants, that I attribute, under 



THE END OF THE EXILE 303 

Providence, the re-establishment of our House upon 
the throne of our ancestors, and this fortunate state 
of affairs which promises to heal wounds, calm pas- 
sions, and restore peace, repose, and happiness to 
all nations." 

The King's speech has been severely criticised by 
every author who has written the history of the 
Restoration. "These words," says M. Alfred Nette- 
ment, "overdid Louis XVIII. 's gratitude toward 
the English government, of whom he had often 
complained and with reason; they had, moreover, 
the grave inconvenience of sacrificing a future effect 
to a present one. As soon as the delirium of peace 
had quieted down, they could be turned against the 
King of France and represented as an act of vassal- 
age toward England by detaching them from the 
circumstances in which they had been uttered, and 
the discourse of the Prince Regent which had pro- 
voked them, like those figures which lose their 
expression when detached from the picture in which 
they were introduced." 

Lamartine has been still more severe. He says : 
" These words which were inspired by the gratitude 
of the exile, but which the dignity of the King of 
France should have interdicted from his lips, were 
afterwards the remorse of his reign, and the text of 
patriotism against his family. France was not 
merely forgotten in them, but humiliated." 

Finally Baron Louis of Viel-Castle has thus 
expressed himself : " Whether these words were due 



304 TEE DUCHESS OF ANGOUL^ME 

to the excitement of the place and time, or whether 
they were intentionally aimed at the dominant 
influence then exercised by the Russian Emperor, 
it would have been difficult to utter more untoward 
ones. One fails to understand how they could have 
issued from the mouth of a Prince who on other 
occasions gave evidence of dignity and tact. Their 
plain meaning was that the House of Bourbon owed 
their recovered throne to England solely; that the 
other Powers had done nothing towards it, and that 
the French people themselves had had no part in 
the recall of their Kings. This was not true. The 
Emperor Alexander was the real author of the 
Restoration, with M. de Talleyrand and the Senate, 
and if the Senate was not the legitimate representa- 
tive of France, existing laws attributed that char- 
acter to it up to a certain point. This speech 
wounded the Russian monarch and the other Allies 
deeply; it especially displeased and disquieted the 
members of the provisional government and all 
those who dreaded to see the Bourbons adopt an 
anti-national system of reaction." 

After his allocution, Louis XVI II., assisted by 
the Prince of Cond^ and the Duke of Bourbon, took 
off his blue ribbon and his badge of the Order of 
the Holy Spirit, and decorated the Prince Regent 
with his own hands. " I esteem myself singularly 
happy, " said he, " to be able to confer the first rib- 
bon of this ancient Order on a Prince who has so 
powerfully contributed to the deliverance and resur- 



THE END OF THE EXILE 305 

rection of France." In exchange he received the 
Order of the Garter. 

Louis XVIII. spent three days in London, and 
then, accompanied by the Prince Regent, he went 
to Dover, where, on April 24, 1814, he sailed for 
Calais with the Duchess of AngoulSme, the Prince 
of Cond^, and the Duke of Bourbon. 

The royalists will never forget that day. For 
them it is an apotheosis. The springtime smiled; 
the sky gloried, and its golden gleams were reflected 
in an azure sea. Joyous cries and enthusiastic 
acclamations resounded on land and sea. The 
Straits of Dover were filled with vessels hung with 
flags. All England seemed making a cortdge for 
the King of France. The terrible cannons of the 
two nations, which had so often thundered against 
each other, united gladly in salvos of concord and 
rejoicing. The white flag floated at every mast- 
head, applause renewed itself on every wave. 

At one o'clock in the afternoon the King embarked 
on the Royal Sovereign, the finest vessel in the 
English fleet, escorted by eight men-of-war, com- 
manded by the Duke of Clarence. The Prince 
Regent looked at his departing guests from the win- 
dows of Dover Castle, and made them signs of 
farewell. Aided by a favoring wind, the squad- 
ron advanced rapidly. Louis XVIII. impatiently 
awaited the moment when they could see the coast 
of France. God be praised! There it is, that 
beloved coast, that coast so often desired amidst the 



306 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME 

long griefs of exile ! There is the end of so many 
trials ! There the port where, after so many storms, 
the vessel of French monarchy is about to seek a 
shelter ! It is the hour of safety and of triumph. 

The seacoast, the ramparts of Calais, and the 
high places along the shore are thronged with an 
innumerable crowd. The King, in order to allow 
himself to be recognized, separates from the group 
gathered around him on the bridge of the Royal Sov- 
ereign. He alone takes off his hat. Lifting his eyes 
to heaven, and lajdng his right hand on his heart, 
he returns thanks to Providence. Then, standing 
on the high prow of the ship, he holds out his arms 
toward the shore and clasps them again upon his 
breast as if to embrace his country. The cannon 
roar. The bells ring with all their might. The 
cries of the people drown the murmur of the ocean. 
Then the King points out to the crowd his niece, 
the Duchess of Angouleme, who has approached 
him. At the sight of the saintly Princess, whose 
woes are already legendary, enthusiasm reaches its 
height. The holy woman, whose soul is ordinarily 
straitened by sadness and chagrin, trembles. She 
weeps, but it is with joy. Such a sentiment is so 
unfamiliar to her that she sometimes asks herself if 
she is not the sport of some enchanting dream from 
which she will have a cruel awakening. So radiant 
a day seems not to have been made for the daughter 
of the martyr King and Queen, for the orphan of the 
Temple, for the woman who has drained to the 



THE END OF THE EXILE 307 

dregs the cup of grief and bitterness. Near her 
may be seen the Prince of Condd and the Duke of 
Bourbon, one of whom is the father and the other 
the grandfather of the unfortunate Duke of Enghien. 
From the shore come shouts of "There he is! 'Tis 
he! the King! Long live the King! Long live 
Madame ! Long live the Bourbons ! " The authori- 
ties of Calais go on board the ship and offer their 
homage to their sovereign. General Maison is the 
first French general admitted to the honor of saluting 
him. The ill-luck of the Bourbons will bring them 
face to face with the same man, sixteen years later, 
under very different circumstances. But what tri- 
umpher dreams of future catastrophes ? When Louis 
XVIII. lands on the jetty, leaning, as of old in the 
icy plains of Lithuania, on the arm of the daughter 
of Louis XVI., tears flow from every eye. Alas ! this 
return to her country is but a halting-place on the 
road of sorrow for the unhappy Princess. The exile 
which ends at this moment is to begin anew eleven 
months later. 



INDEX 



Alexander I., his sympathy for, 
and aid to, Louis XVIII., 258; 
at Mittau, 270; his indifference 
to Louis XVIII., after Waterloo, 
287; considers Bernadotte as a 
possible ruler for France, 291. 

Angouleme, Duchess of, the part 
played by her, 5; character of, 
contrasted with that of the Duch- 
ess of Berry, 7, 38 ; her life-long 
aversion to the scenes of her 
early sufferings, 8; resembles 
her father, 9 ; birth of, 12 ; relig- 
ious advice of her father, 13; 
vicissitudes of her life, 13 et seq.; 
married to the Duke of Angou- 
leme, 15 ; called the French An- 
tigone, 16; her series of exiles, 
19; death of her husband, 19; 
her death, 20; her journal in 
captivity, 49; her anxiety con- 
cerning her mother, 57 ; rigorous 
captivity of, 58 ; deprived of the 
services of her attendant, 58 ; ex- 
amination of, by members of the 
Convention, 60; ignorant of her 
mother's death, 64; consoled by 
the presence and counsels of 
Madame Elisabeth, 66 ; her trib- 
ute to Madame Elisabeth, 76 ; in 
solitary confinement, 78 ; visited 
by Robespierre, 80; follows the 
daily routine prescribed by her 
aunt, 82; illness of, 83; her ac- 
count of Barras' visit, 85; in 
charge of Laurent, 86 et seq.; 
the rigors of her captivity ame- 
liorated, 88; not allowed to nurse 
her brother, 96 ; in ignorance of 
her brother's death, 105 ; the 



severity of her captivity relaxed, 
111 ; Madame de Chantereine as- 
signed as her companion, 112, 
127; learns of the death of her 
relatives, 112 ; clothes and books 
given her, 113; Hue and others 
sing to her from an apart- 
ment adjoining the Temple, 114 ; 
visited by Madame de Tourzel 
and her daughter, 116 et seq.; 
relates to them details of her 
captivity, 120 et seq.; her ap- 
pearance, 121; her resolve to 
marry the Duke of Angouleme, 
126; correspondence of, with 
Louis XVIII. , 130; has more 
freedom and is again serenaded, 
131 ; her appearance and de- 
meanor, 133 ; hopes for a royalist 
reaction, and is disappointed, 
1.36 et seq.; interrogated with 
regard to the movement in Paris, 
141; ransom for, proposed by 
the Vienna Cabinet, 142 et seq.; 
negotiations successful, 148; re- 
ceives the news of her deliver- 
ance without enthusiasm, 149; 
asks for her mother's things 
and is refused, 150; her depart- 
ure from the Temple, 154 et seq.; 
the inscription made by her on 
the walls of her apartment, 155; 
her travelling companions and in- 
cidents of her journey to Vienna, 
157 et seq.; refuses to accept the 
trousseau furnished by the Direc- 
tory, 161, 166; delivered to the 
Austrian authorities, 166; ar- 
rives at Vienna, 168 ; is installed 
in the imperial palace, 171; in- 

309 



310 



mDEX 



terest felt in her, 171; Madame 
de Soucy separated from her, 
172 ; the prisoner of Austria, 174 ; 
moral force of, 174 ; is the subject 
of Austrian schemes, 176 et seq.; 
offended by the proceedings of 
the Austrian court, 179; goes to 
join Louis XVIII. at Mittau, 182 ; 
her opinion of the emigres, 192 ; 
her sympathy for them, 199 ; her 
knowledge of human nature, 200 ; 
arrives at Mittau, 217; descrip- 
tion of, by the Count of Saint- 
Priest, 218; presented by Louis 
XVIII. to his household, 219 et 
seq.; her marriage to the Duke 
of Angouleme, 223 et seq.; letter 
of, to Paul I., 223; marriage 
ceremony between, and the Duke 
of Angouleme at Mittau, 227; 
the marriage certificate, 228; 
the signers of it, 229 ; presents to, 
and from, 234; her miniature, 
234; influence of her pure and 
lofty character, 236 ; her appear- 
ance at Mittau described by 
Abb€ Georgel, 239; suffers from 
the state of dependence she is in, 
241 ; begs for two days' grace be- 
fore leaving Mittau, 251; hard- 
ships of her journey, 252, 257; 
pledges her diamonds, 256; let- 
ter of, to the Queen of Prussia, 
257; joined by her husband at 
Warsaw, 258; letter of, to the 
Prince of Conde on the murder 
of the Duke of Enghien, 262; 
rejoices in her uncle's protest 
against the Empire, 265 ; at home 
in Warsaw, 268 ; goes to Mittau, 
268 ; nurses the Abbe Edgeworth, 
who dies in her arms, 269; at 
Hartwell, 273; her relations to 
Louis XVIII., 278; appears at 
the English court, 278; her life 
at Hartwell, 280; her household 
there, 280; enters London with 
Louis XVIII., 300; returns to 
France, 306. 



Angouleme, Duke of, Louis XVI. 'S 
desire to marry Marie The'riise 
to, 126; not allowed to come to 
Vienna, 180; offends Peter I. 
in the matter of the Order of 
Malta, 212; description of, 221 
et seq. ; leaves Mittau for Conde's 
army, 241 ; letter of, to the Czar, 
241 ; with the army at Pontaba, 
242 ; rejoins his wife at Warsaw, 
258; issues a proclamation to 
Soult's army, 288; enters Bor- 
deaux and takes possession in 
the name of Louis XVIII., 296; 
proclamation of, 297; asks Wel- 
lington for men and money, 
297. 

Artois, Count of, imable to be pres- 
ent at the marriage of Marie 
Therese, 225; letter of, to Louis 
XVIII. on the subject, 226; his 
declaration of adherence to the 
cause of Louis XVIII., 266 ; often 
at Hartwell, 280; decides to 
leave England with his sons, 
289; lands in Holland, 288; au- 
thorized to come to Nancy, 292. 

Austria, designs of, as to the mar- 
riage of Marie The'rese, 164. 

Auger, Count of, commander of 
the guard provided for Louis 
XVIII. by Paul I., 209. 

Avaray, Count of, sent by Louis 
XVIII. to conduct Marie Therfese 
to Verona, 164; the favorite of 
Louis XVIII. at Hartwell, 281; 
death of, 283. 

Barante, Baron of, describes the 
court of Louis XVIII. at Mittau, 
210, 214; criticises the instruc- 
tions of Louis XVIII. to Saint- 
Priest, 244. 

Barras, arrests Robespierre, 84; 
pays a visit to the Temple and 
sees Marie Therese, 86; made 
guardian of the children of Louis 
XVI., 86; his compassion for the 
young Prince, 96. 



INDEX 



311 



Harare accuses Robespierre of wish- 
ing to marry Marie Therese, 84. 

Beauliarnais, Eugene, spoken of as 
a possible ruler for France, 291. 

Benezech tries to make favor with 
the Bourbons, 150 et seq. ,■ an- 
nounces to the Princess the time 
of her departure, 153 et seq. 

Bernadotte, talked of as a possible 
ruler for France, 287, 291. 

Berry, Duchess of, the part played 
by her, 5; character of, con- 
trasted with that of the Duchess 
of Angouleme, 7, 38 ; her roman- 
tic disposition, 10; birth and 
ancestry of, 21; married to the 
Duke of Berry, 21 ; her entry 
into France, 22; death of her 
infants, 23 ; her husband stabbed, 
24; birth of her son, 25; her 
popularity and fascination, 26; 
her valor, 27; at Holyrood, 28; 
returns to France, 29 ; in hiding, 
29 ; arrested, 31 ; taken to the 
citadel of Blaye, 33; her secret 
marriage with Count Palli, 34; 
her political career ended, 35 ; 
loses her daughter and her hus- 
band, 37 ; her death, 38. 

Berry, Duke of, stabbed, 24; lands 
on the island of Jersey, 289; 
letter of, quoted by Chateau- 
briand, 289. 

Beresford, General, occupies Bor- 
deaux, 295, 296. 

Bertiu, M. Ernest, disproves the 
claims of the pretenders to the 
title of Louis XVII., 106. 

Beurnouville, career of, 145. 

Blacas, M. de, succeeds M. d'Ava- 
ray, as the favorite of Louis 
XVIIL, 283; jealousy of, 283. 

Blaye, citadel of, 33 et seq. 

Bonaparte, see Napoleon. 

Bordeaux, Louis XVIII. proclaimed 
at, 295; deputation from, to 
Louis XVIII., 297 eiseg. 

Calmar, Louis XVIII. at, 266. 



Caraman, M. de, banished by the 
Czar from St. Petersburg, 250. 

Chambord, Count of, attachment of 
to the Duchess of Angouleme,19. 

Chantelauze, M., his book on Louis 
XVII., 91; destroys the claims 
of the pretenders to the name 
of Louis XVII., 106 et seq. 

Chantereine, Madame de, assigned 
by the Committee of Public 
Safety as companion to Marie 
Therese, 111; her report to the 
committee, 112 ; description of, 
127. 

Chateaubriand, his Buonaparte 
and the Bourbons, 7; quoted, 
8; his devotion to the Duchess 
of Angouleme, 19; imdertakes 
to reconcile the Duchess of Berry 
with Charles X., 34 ; on the mar- 
riage of the Duchess of Angou- 
leme, 232 ; quoted, 261. 

Chauveau-Lagarde, defends Ma- 
dame Elisabeth before the revo- 
lutionary tribunal, 71. 

Choisy, Mademoiselle de, chosen 
by Marie The'rese as maid of 
honor, 237. 

Concerts in the Rotunda of the 
Temple to Marie The'rese, 132. 

Conde, Prince of, entertains Paul 
I. at Chantilly in 1782, 206; tt 
Hartwell, 280; letter of, to the 
Duke of Berry, 281. 

Cond^, the army of, 193 ; licentious 
and disorderly, 195 e< seq.; an- 
nouncement of the marriage of 
the Duchess of Angouleme to, 
233 ; disbanded, 257. 

Contades, Count of, remarks of, on 
the conduct of the Emigres, 193, 
194. 

Catherine the Great, her interest 
in the French Emigres, 202 ; has 
little sympathy with Louis 
XVIII., 205. 

Darboy, Mgr., on Madame Elisa- 
beth, 54. 



312 



INDEX 



Desault, Dr., emotion of, over 
the wretched condition of Louis 
XVII., 102; death of, 103. 

Deutz betrays the Duchess of 
Berry, 32. 

Didier, M. Charles, interview of, 
with the Duchess of Angouleme, 
20. 

Doupanloup, Mgr., quoted, 4. 

Drouet, one of the prisoners ex- 
changed for Marie Therese, 144. 

Duguigny, Demoiselles, the Duch- 
ess of Berry in hiding with, 
29. 

Dumas, President of the revolu- 
tionary tribunal, his interroga- 
tion of Madame Elisabeth, 70. 

Edgeworth, Abbe, sent for by Ma- 
rie Therese, 219 ; death of, 269. 

Elisabeth, Madame, the sole com- 
panion of Marie Therese in the 
Temple, 52; her pure and ele- 
vated character, 53 et seq. ; her 
daily prayer in the Temple, 54 ; 
her patience under her persecu- 
tion, 59; her pious instructions 
and consolations to Marie The- 
rese, 66; examination of by 
members of the Convention, 61 ; 
taken before the revolutionary 
tribunal, 68 et seq. ; the act 
of accusation against her, 69; 
interrogated by Dumas, 70 ; con- 
demned to death, 72; exhorts 
and encourages her companions 
in the Conciergerie, 73; at the 
^scaffold, 75 ; her last words, 76. 

Emigre's, their opinion of Napo- 
leon, 6 ; their characteristics and 
experiences, 192 et seq. ; at Co- 
blentz, 195 ; with Conde', 195, 197 ; 
their destitution, 198 ; the army 
of, enters Russia in the service 
of Paul I., 207. 

Enghien, Duke of, sends his ad- 
hesion to the cause of Louis 
XVIIL, 261 ; murder of, 262. 

Eylau, battle of, 269. 



Ferrand, M., his description of the 

examination of the Princesses in 

the Temple, 62. 
Fersen, Count of, relates Marie 

Antoinette's comment on the 

emigration, 193. 
Francis II. gives Marie Therese an 

establishment in the imperial 

palace, 171 ; his children, 171. 
Frotte, Count of, alleged to have 

rescued Louis XVII., 108. 

Geramb, Baron of, his description 
of the Duchess of Angouleme, 
278 et seq. 

Genet, his description of Paul I., 
205. 

Georgel, Abbe, comes to Mittau, 
238 et seq. ; his description of 
the court of Louis XVIIL there, 
239. 

Gomin, testimony of, to the con- 
dition of Louis XVII. , 101 ; paper 
given to, by the Princess in re- 
turn for his services, 162. 

Gourbillon, Madame, accompanies 
the Queen Marie Josephine to 
Mittau, 217; Louis XVIIL anx- 
ious to get rid of her, 216. 

Gustavus III. on the emigres, 194. 

Havre, Duke of, letter of, on the 
ambitious plans of Austria with 
regard to Marie Therese, 178. 

Hartwell, the manor of, purchased 
by Louis XVIIL, 273; life at, 
274. 

Hautefort, Count of, his account 
of the sale of the diamonds of 
the Duchess of Angouleme, 256. 

He'bert, ^isit of, to the Temi^le, 58. 

Hompesch, the Grand Master of 
the Order of Malta, 211. 

Hue, Frant^ois, arrest of, 64; sings 
to the Princess from a room ad- 
joining the Temple, 114 ; warned 
to desist, 115; brings a letter 
from Louis XVIIL to the Prin- 
cess, 130 ; testifies to the increas- 



INDEX 



313 



ing sympathy for the Princess, 
151; permitted to rejoin the 
Princess at Huningue, 159; al- 
lowed to remain in Vienna, 173. • 

Jeanroi, Doctor, assures Madame 
de Tourzel of the death of Louis 
XVII., 129. 

Kersabiec, Mademoiselle, in hid- 
ing with the Duchess of Berry, 
29 et seq. 

Kolb, Adjutant, escorts Marie 
Therese to the frontier of Swit- 
zerland, 167. 

Lafare, Mgr., letter of, to Louis 
XVIII., on Marie Therese, 180. 

Lamartine, quoted with regard to 
Louis XVIII. and the Duchess of 
Angoiileme, 277 ; quoted, 286, 300, 
303. 

Lasne replaces Laurent in the care 
of the children of Louis XVI., 101, 

La Tour d'Auvergne, Countess of, 
a member of the household of 
the Duchess of Angouleme, 238. 

Laurent, put in provisional charge 
of the children of Louis XVI., 
86,97. 

Lebon, Alfred, his I'Angleterre et 
V Emigration Fran^'aise, quoted, 
175. 

Legitimists, their opinion of the 
Empire, 7. 

Louis XVII., imprisonment of, in 
the Temple, 56 et seq.; inhuman 
treatment of, by his jailor, Simon, 
56, 122; description of his dim- 
geon, 90; his condition, 91; in 
solitary confinement, 92 ; barbar- 
ous treatment of, 93 et seq.; his 
wretched condition, 98; partial 
alleviation of it, 101; Dr. Desault 
in attendence upon him, 102 ; his 
last sufferings and death, 104; 
numerous claimants of his name 
and title, 105 et seq.; no doubt 
as to his death, 108. 

Louis XVIIL, letter of, to Madame 



de Tourzel concerning the mar- 
riage of Marie Therese, 125 ; sends 
Count of Avaray to bring Marie 
Therese to Verona, 164, 181; his 
ancestry and character, 183; his 
wife, 183, 184, 187, 190 ; his flight 
from France, 184; at Coblentz, 
185; declares himself Regent of 
France, 185 ; at Verona, 186 ; his 
counsellors, 187; at Reigel, 188; 
wounded by a musket ball, 188 ; 
treated like an outlaw, 189; at 
Blankenburg, 190 ; arrives at Mit- 
tau, the guest of Paul I., 202, 209 
et seq. ; respectfully treated by 
the Russian court, 211 ; his part in 
the affair of the Grand Order of 
Malta, 212; humiliated by his 
position, 214 ; joined by his wife, 
216 ; letter of, to Paul I. on the 
marriage of Marie Therese, 224 ; 
his letters to Paul I. on the mar- 
riage of the Duke and Duchess 
of Angouleme, 231; letter of, to 
the Prince of Conde, 232; ad- 
dresses a circular letter to his 
diplomatic agents, 233; descrip- 
tion of him by Abbe Georgel, 
239; his pensions from Paul I. 
and the King of Spain, 240 ; de- 
ceives himself concerning a res- 
toration, 243 et seq. ; his expec- 
tations dashed by the battle of 
Marengo, 245; expelled from 
Russia, 249 et seq. ; sets out on 
his journey, 252; travels as the 
Count of Lille, 254; at Memel, 
255; arrival of his body-guard, 
255; at Warsaw, 257; declara- 
tion of, in reply to Bonaparte's 
proposal, 259; letter of, to Bona- 
parte in 1800, 262; letter of, to 
Charles IV., returning the Golden 
Fleece, 264; his protest against 
the Empire, 264 ; at Cahnar, 266; 
returns to Mittau, 268 ; letter of, 
concerning the death of the Abb^ 
Edgeworth, 269; leaves Mittau 
for Sweden, 271; goes to Eng- 



314 



INDEX 



land, 272; buys the manor of 
Hartwell, 273; keeps up the 
semblance of royalty, 275 ; death 
of his wife and her burial in 
Westminster Abbey, 275 ; his 
relations with the Duchess of 
Angouleme, 278; letter of, to 
Alexander I. in behalf of the 
French prisoners in Russia, 285 
et seq. ; convinced of his return 
to France, 287; receives the 
homage of Bordeaux, 297; and 
a deputation from the Borde- 
lais, 298; response of, to the 
letter of the mayor of Bordeaux, 
299; his popularity in England, 
300; enters London and is re- 
ceived by the Prince Regent, 300 
et seq. ; his reply to the Prince 
Regent's address, 302 ; criticisms 
of this speech, 303; decorates 
the Prince, 304 ; sails for France, 
305 ; his arrival there, 307. 

Louise of France, Princess, her 
career, 39. 

Lynch, M. de, mayor of Bordeaux, 
sends agents to Wellington, 294, 
295 ; letter of ,to Louis XVIII., 299. 

Macartney, Lord, expresses the 
sentiments of the French royal- 
ists of Vienna for Austria, 176; 
his letter describing Louis XVIII., 
186. 

Mackau, Baroness of, permitted to 
visit Marie Therese in the Tem- 
ple, 124 ; writes to Louis XVIII. 
concerning her, 125. 

Malta taken by Bonaparte, 211; 
given to the Czar by Bonaparte, 
248 ; seized by the English, 249. 

Malta, the Order of, schemes of 
Paul I. with regard to, 211 et seq. 

Maistre, Joseph de, his comment 
on the treatment of the imigris 
by the Russians, 203. 

Marengo, battle of, adjourns the 
expectations of the court of 
Mittau, 245. 



Maret, one of the prisoners ex- 
changed for Marie Th^rfese, 146. 

Marie Antoinette, a study of her 
character necessary to an under- 
standing of the Revolution, 3; in 
the Temple, 48 ; leaves it for the 
Coneiergerie, 49. 

Marie Josephine, 183, 187, 190; 
joins Louis XVIII. at Mittau 
216; death of, at Hartwell, and 
burial in Westminster Abbey, 275. 

Marie Louise, the little, receives 
much attention from Marie The- 
rese, 171. 

Marie Therese, see Duchess of 
Angouleme. 

Marriage of the Duke of Angou- 
leme and Marie Therese at Mit- 
tau, 227 et seq. 

Michelet, quoted, 4. 

Mittau, account of, 210; Louis 
XVIII. at, 209 et seq. ; the court 
at, its personnel and support, 240. 

Montmorency-Laval, Cardinal, per- 
forms the marriage ceremony of 
the Duke and Duchess of Angou- 
leme, 227. 

Napoleon, how regarded by the 
emigres, 6; and by the legiti- 
mists, 7 ; Chateaubriand's bro- 
chure on him, 7; his debut 
on the 13th Vende'miaire, 138 
gives Malta to the Czar, 248 
letter of, to Louis XVIII., 263 
and the Bourbons, 276 ; his court 
like theirs, 277. 

Narbonne, Countess of, at Hart- 
well, 274. 

Naundorff, pretender to the title of 
Louis XVII., 106. 

Orleans, deputation from, demand 
the release of Marie Therese, 110. 

Parma, Duke of, assassination of, 
36; his marriage to Louise of 
France, 41. 

Paul I., enthusiastic for Louis 



INDEX 



315 



XVIII. and the 4migr6s, 205 ; his 
character, 205; his reception at 
VersaiUes in 1782, 206, 224 ; takes 
Conde's army into his pay, 207 ; 
gives Louis XVIII. a refuge at 
Mittau, 209; his schemes con- 
cerning the order of Malta, 211 ; 
jealous of his guest, Louis XVIII. , 
214; finds the court of Louis 
XVIII. at Mittau a hurden, 215 ; 
signs the marriage certificate of 
the Duke and Duchess of Angou- 
leme, 232; becomes infatuated 
with the First Consul, 246 ; cause 
of his change of attitude towards 
Louis XVIII., 247; becomes the 
ally of Bonaparte, 249; assassi- 
nation of, 258, 

Pichegru, General, communicates 
the proposal of the exchange of 
Marie The'rfese to General Stein, 
147. 

Polastron, Madame de, beloved by 
the Count of Artois, 280. 

Prince Regent, address of, to Louis 
XVIII. , 302. 

Puymaigre, Count of, his account 
of the march of Conde's army to 
Russia, 257 ; quoted, 257. 

Richard, Madame, sends word of 

Marie Antoinette to the Temple, 

63. 
Richmont, pretended son of Louis 

XVI., 108. 
Robespierre, visits Marie Th^rfese 

in the Tower, 80 ; overthrow of, 

84,86. 
Romain, Count of, quoted, 168. 

Sainte-Beuve, his description of the 
journal of Marie Therfese, 49. 

Saint-Priest, Count of, sent by 
Louis XVIII. to Vienna with in- 
structions to ask for a recogni- 
tion, 243. 

Serent, Madame de, with the Duch- 
ess of Angouleme at Mittau, 237. 

Simon, the Cobbler, the jailor of 



Louis XVII., 56; gives up his 

position, 92. 
Soucy, Madame de, accompanies 

Marie Therese to Vienna, 1S2; 

separated from her, 172. 
Sorel, Albert, his VEurope et la 

Revolution fran(;aise, quoted, 203 

et seq. 
Stein, General, 147. 

Temple, the, its associations and a 
description of, 45 et seq.; tha 
apartments of the royal family 
in, 47. 

Thiers, pays too little attention to 
Josephine in his history, 3; his 
bargain with Deutz, 32. 

Thugut, Baron, hostile to the Emi- 
gres, 177 ; his ambitious schemes 
for Austria with regard to Marie 
The'rese, 178. 

Tison, the attendant of the Prin- 
cesses in the Temple, removed, 59. 

Tourzel, Duchess of, her visit to 
Marie Therese, 81 ; extract from 
her journal, 88 ; extract from her 
Memoirs relating to Louis XVII., 
101 ; visits the Princess, 116 ; her 
relations to the royal family, 117 ; 
her loyalty to them, 118 ; obtains 
permission to visit the Princess 
regularly, 119, 124; her descrip- 
tion of Madame Chantereiue, 127 ; 
shows Dr. Jeanroi a portrait of 
the Prince and is assured of 
his death, 129; brings about a 
correspondence between Loois 
XVIII. and the Princess, 130; 
forbidden to visit the Temple, 
141 ; not allowed to accompany 
Marie Therese to Vienna, 150. 

Tressau, Abbe de, his description 
of the reception of Marie The- 
rese at Mittau, 209 et seq. 

Treilhard, advocates in the Conven- 
tion the exchange of Marie The- 
rese, 142. 

Turgy, carries news of Marie An- 
toinette to the Princesses, 63. 



316 



INDEX 



Viel-Castel, M. de, his History of 
the Restoration quoted, 284; 
condemns the speech of Louis 
XVIII., in reply to the Prince 
Regent, 303. 

Vitrolles, M. de, interviews of, 
with Metternich and the Czar, 
291, 292; memoirs of, quoted 
with regard to Bonaparte and 
the Bourbons, 276; describes 
Louis XVIII. 's relations to his 
court at Hartwell, 281 ; hears of 
the Count of Artois' arrival in 
France, 290. 

Warin, Regnault, his romance of 



the 
106. 



pretended Louis XVII.s, 



Warsaw, Louis XVIII. at, 257 ; the 
Duchess of Angouleme at home 
in, 268. 

Wansted House, declaration dated 
at, from the Count of Artois, the 
Duke of Berry, and others, 
260. 

Wellington, Lord, has little sym- 
pathy with the Bourbons, 294; 
approached by the mayor of 
Bordeaux, 294; decides to occupy 
that city, 295 ; refuses to aid the 
Bourbon cause, 298. 

Woman, the influence of, too much 
neglected in history, 3. 



THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 

By IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND. 



Volume V. of the Series just ready. 
NAPOLEON III. AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER. 

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Vol. I. — LOUIS NAPOLEON AND MADEMOISELLE 
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assassination of her husband and the birth of her son, the Count of Chambord: and 
the latter was from the first marked by those reactionary tendencies which resulted 
in the dethronement and exile of the Bourbons. The dramatic Revolution which 
brought about the July monarchy of Louis Philippe has never been more vividly 
and intelligently described than in the last volume devoted to the Duchess of Berry. 

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848. 

With Four Portraits. Price $1.25 net 

M. Imbert de Saint-Amand's volume on " The Duchess of Berry and the Revo« 
lution of 1830," which described the turbulent accession of Louis Philippe to the 
throne of France, is followed by the account of the Citizen King's equally agitated 
abdication and exile during the Revolution of 1848. As always, the historian writes 
from the inside, and his description of the exciting events of the February days that 
led to the overthrow of the Orleanist dynasty, the flight of the last king France has 
had, and the dramatically sudden establishment of the Second Republic is famfliar 
and intimate rather than formal, and the reader gets a view of what passed behind 
the scenes as well as on the stage, at that interesting and fateful moment. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

597-599 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
4 



